HHH HHH EEEEEE LL LL ’’’ SSSSS HHH HHH EEE LL LL ’’’ SS HHHHHHHH EEEEE LL LL ’ SS HHH HHH EEE LL LL SS HHH HHH EEEEEE LLLLL LLLLL SSSSSS GGGGGG A TTTTTT EEEEEE GG AA AA TT EEE GG GG AA AA TT EEEEE GG G AAAAAAAAA TT EEE GGGGGGG AAA AAA TT EEEEEE ________ \ /________ \ / \______________________ |--------/\ / / \ \____________ | / \/ /Palodios\ \ | \ /\ \ / ____________/ |--------\/ \ \ / ____________________/ / \__________/ /______\ Okay, I'm still kinda working on a better ASCII artwork piece… Hell Gate Dungeon Walkthrough for Tactics Ogre on Playstation (PSX) E-Mail: Kensaideity@comcast.net Do not send me questions asking about the game, because all I know about Hell’s Gate is here, and I don’t know all that much about the rest of the game. 8/07/04, First Version Remember, to search this document, hold control and press F. ooooooooooooo Legal Stuff ooooooooooooo This guide cannot be reproduced without the written consent of the author, and may not be altered or changed if given. This guide may NOT be used to gain any form of profit. This guide is for personal use only. I requested this guide to be posted at the following sites, whether it is there now or not. It is allowed at any other site as long as credit is given to me, and there isn’t any offensive content elsewhere on the site. Rpgamer.com gamefaqs.com ign.com oooooooooooooo Version Info oooooooooooooo First Version This is basically the first version of the guide. It has several pieces of information to make navigating Hell’s Gate much easier. Hell’s Gate is Tactics Ogre’s hardest dungeon, so I decided it a good idea to do write about when I have the time ooooooooooooooooooo Basic Information ooooooooooooooooooo -There are one hundred floors in Hell’s Gate. You can leave the dungeon after any floor, but you will have to return to the first floor. Getting through it can take anywhere from ten to thirty hours. -You will not be healed between levels. The best strategy is to kill all the enemies but one, petrify that enemy, heal, and then finish the last enemy off. -There are several awesome items, spells and skills in HG that will make the final enemies look like wimps. However, you gain no experience from killing anything. -Some random battles have rare items, but some do not. Many find it to be very useful to save right before they kill the last enemy of each battle, see what the next battle is, and then reset and reload if need be. -Most of the floors in Hell’s Gate yield completely random enemies. However, the set of enemies you meet will be in a random group, depending on which ten floors you are one (ie, monsters on level 1-10 will be quite different from monsters on level 91-100) -Most of the floors in Hell’s Gate will just be a small square room with a square of raised elevation in the middle. It usually only takes one or two turns before the battle begins, and sometimes you may find yourself with one less mage or a priest before you even get to move. -Story Battles, as well as every floor that ends with 5 or 0 (ie 55, 90), have a completely different design, and are very useful to use to heal any characters heavily damaged in the last few levels. -To unlock Hell’s Gate, you must fight Nybbas at Fort Kadorigga in the first chapter, and in chapter four, read about hell’s gate in the warren report and the path will open up. I recommend you wait until you get to Heigm before you start though. ooooooooooo Strategy ooooooooooo Going through the grueling hundred level Hell’s Gate is quite a doozy, so you better be prepared. Here is what I recommend as your party’s setup, : A D S D E P W K W C An Angel knight. You need a lawful female with less than ten kills, and the following stats: 92 mp, 135 strength, 122 vitality, 122 agility, 124 dexterity, 144 inteligence, 119 mentality, and there is no hp requirement. Once you have one of those, kill her in battle, and she should usually revive as an angel knight automatically. Their ability calmsong is crucial in draining the mp of an enemy with dragon magic, and they can use starion and exorcism, which will wipe out a group of enemy undead. If you want to do more physical damage, start training either train as a valkyrie and switch to siren for the mp. If you want high magic and mentality for casting Starion, train as an amazon till 22 and then as a priestess to 23 Defensive characters. Guildus and Mildain are very good at defense, and have can take some damage, or you could use some of your other characters with extra stats. If you’re neutral or chaotic, Denim as a Terror knight or Dragoon will be fine for one of these two spots, or you could use a generic Terror Knight or Dragoon. I recommend defense to have a one handed weapon (anything but a sword so they can use the special skills) and a shield, but a powerful two handed weapon is useful as well. Their best ability is Devil Cry, which does massive damage, but damages the user, but for it to be useful, the defense character needs a healer to have a weight that is just a few points higher to help out. Swordmaster. If you’re lawful, Denim will take this spot, otherwise use Harborym, or another generic swordmaster. A good swordmaster can stun or petrify most enemies at 100% from the front, and with good placement, you can hit everyone sometimes. It takes two turns to get that kind of mp though, so in a head to head battle, have a fast caster charge your swordmaster early. Also, the skill Fudo is based on dexterity, and ignores defense, so it can do massive amounts of damage when used by a swordsmaster. Be careful though, with a Swordmaster in the center spot, he can die quickly, EagleMan. Canopus is highly mobile, highly powerful, and can be quite useful with a good spear and tornado. I find him great at finishing off weak enemies. Priestess (or priests for the poorly translated). As I mentioned earlier, your mages can get pounded on, and it’s essential to have revivify. Heal All and Heal are also very good spells. Warlocks and Kachua. I recommend you start with two warlocks, and that they have different elements than Kachua and Radlum (unless Kachua and Radlum are the same element, or if Kachua is not in your party, in which case you should have three). They can use the powerful dragon magic, and if you’re going through Hell’s Gate, you better prepare four casters, one of each element, for all the magic you pick up. Before you get three dragon magics, replace a warlock with archers or a gunner. Warlocks are best with Charge, Dragon Magic, and Quick or Paradigm so if you need someone dead they can help each other cast more quickly. A cleric. Clerics are useful because they can use heal+, which Priestesses cannot, but on the other hand, they don’t have revivify. Kachua can be given heal all, heal+ and revivify to be better than both classes. ooooooooooooo Preparation ooooooooooooo You should also do the following things before going to Hell’s Gate: Make sure to save Kachua. She is the best caster you will get in the game, and the lord class isn’t anywhere as useful. Pick up the Zenobian Sword, because it’s very powerful, and very lightweight, and a very useful weapon. Recruit Ganb and get his rifle. If you want, turn his griffins to nice stats. You should also make sure to pick up all the special items dropped by enemies on the way to Ganb, while useless later on; they can help out on the first floors. Make use of Heigm. If you recruit a monster, level it to 20, and then sell it there, you can buy a product of the monster, which can either permanently boost stats, or serve a purpose as a useful item. Visit Deneb’s shop. She rents shops and appears on certain days in certain cities. I usually just walk back and forth between two cities that are next to each other until she shows up. She sells rare and valuable orbs, which lowers your weight by ten, so stock up. If you want her to join your party, buy 255 cheap items from her, and the option will appear, but you can get her when she is more powered up later on. Level up the characters you want to do most of your battling in HG. You don’t really need to go any higher than mid 30’s in levels, because random enemies will match your levels anyway. However, make sure everyone is the same level, because if anyone is lower, they will be that much lower than all the enemies, and you won’t be able to change that until you’ve left the HG. If you are having trouble leveling, just unequip two healers, give them heal, and turn on an autofire controller to get past the occasional casting speech. They get a level every eight minutes or so. Having high levels is only important to get past the seven nonrandom battles in the dungeon, so don’t overdo it, or the monsters with extra stats will slaughter you. If you want, you can prepare some useless characters, just in case you get snapshot early on and would like to get some powerful weapons before the later battles. oooooooooooooo Battle Guide oooooooooooooo Floor One- You will fight Venefic Falfadet here. There are a whole lot of mages to take care of, but your position is perfect. Rain down arrows on whoever comes close to you, and remember you can target enemies very far from where there are yellow squares. Try to kill all the enemies, because they all have warp rings, and there is a chance that they drop. Floor two- Prepare for undead here, you’ll need it. The main problem with this battle is that Radlum is running around the map getting himself killed, and he is the key to getting the powerful dragon magic Wipe Out, which will help indefinitely so early in HG. You can mass cast orbs which will do the trick very well, but waste money. Or, you can keep reloading until Radlum moves towards you, in which case you should heal him, and stun him quickly so he doesn’t die, or try hitting enemies with his feeble staff. Floor Three- There is a Gorgon here that holds one random rare item, but don’t kill him yet. You need to open the door, or you will be sent back to the world map after you win the battle. To do so, move a flying character to the northeast corner of the map, and land him on the switch. The switch is on a raised platform of nine squares, eight of the squares are poisoned, except for one, the middle square which has the switch.. Floor Four- Nybbas is here, as well as two familiar faces. Kill your old friends, grab their spears, and finish off Nybbas, its not too hard a battle. Floor Six- Here you will encounter a ghost floating around the dungeon named Roderick. He will randomly give you new skills throughout the dungeon, and they are very useful in fighting the more difficult enemies, like guardians. The skill can be only used when the user has the weapon type equipped; The word Other means a claw, spear, hammer, axe, or whip needs to be equipped. All of the skills do some damage to the user, usually one sixth of the amount of the max damage the skill will do. Some of the skills are as follows Skill Name Weapon Type Description Fudo Sword The damage done is equal to the user’s dex and enemy’s defense and vit are ignored Firewave Other The damage done is equal to the user’s Mentality, but does not ignore defense. It has a lightning element. Devil Cry Other It does massive damage on an enemy but it does massive damage to the user. Rage Bow It does damage based on user’s strength and ignores the enemy’s defense Megabolt Other The damage done is equal to the user’s Mentality, but does not ignore defense. It has a lightning element. Dracul Any Does damage based on the power of the weapon Relic Other Does damage, and petrifies enemy Agony Sword Max hp – Current Hp= Damage Rampower Other Pushes enemy back SoulWave Other Lowers enemy’s max hp Floor Twenty-Five- There are a lot of enemies here, but they are spread out. Half of them have random rare items, so make sure to take them all out. The big prize is what the leader drops, Starion. Starion wipes out the undead, does damage to all enemies, is usable by exorcists and angel knights, and costs a hefty 60 mp. Level 50 contains a demon, with the spell Death. Death is Forbidden magic, meaning it hits everyone on the screen, so its pretty useless to me. There are 9 undeads around, and most of them have rare equipment, so if you feel like it you can persuade them to get new stuff, but I highly recommend spending your time with bigger and better things. If you really want to get the items, be sure to switch starion with exorcism so you can eliminate the undead that aren’t carrying anything. Last Level – Nybbas is here, with a bunch of summoned zombies. Starion is useful, but if your Angel Knight has low dexterity, she might miss some enemies. With all your newly acquired items and spells, he is a cakewalk. Your prize is the spell Necro, which makes it seem like you’ve wasted the last twenty hours of your life. Sadly, you still haven’t done everything. If you’ve beaten all the guardians, and Nybbas, there is one prize left to pick up: The Firecrest. To get it, you have to go all the way back down to the bottem of the dungeon; its on the one hundredth floor, and if you’re willing, you can go down again to pick it up. I don’t have that much time on my hands, but if you do, Good Luck! oooooooooooooo Encounters ooooooooooooooo Boss-like battles Every now and then you end up fighting a random boss battle which can be very difficult, but will contain a downright awesome reward. Guardians. These are the most powerful enemies you will fight in this game, and they come in groups of four. They usually show up for me every twenty-five levels, but when you fight them the first time they can be deadly. If you’re using the save and reload thing to fight guardians, I recommend planning to fight them in one of the normal rooms, right before a stage that ends in 5 or 0, so you can heal the big damage deficient afterwards. You cannot affect them with status abnormalities, and it’s safe to say that you cannot persuade them. Guardians are tough. Some of them have wind attacks that can hit from seven spots away, which will take a huge chunk of hp off most characters. Some of them have an attack that will do large damage and stuns most of the time. One of them carries an orb, and that is the guardian which will drop a weapon. Don’t let him use the orb, or your magic users will be wiped out. Their defense will make most of the damage you do very low, and the counterattack will hit hard anyway, so make use of skills and magic. Fudo is a very useful skill here, but don’t let your swordsmaster get killed. Other good skills are the ones that pierce defense, Cast charge on your warlocks, rather than having them cast it on themselves, so you can get dragon magic off very quickly. If your magic users don’t have dragon magic, the multihit spells, especially gnome, help out a lot. Another type of semi-boss battle is when you fight against a dragon magic warlock. The enemies that happen to surround them are rarely the same, but your first target every time should be the warlock. They hold a mp boosting item, so by their second turn you should make sure they are either dead, or you have drained their mp with an angel knight’s calm song. If you’re in one of the 5 or 0 rooms, make sure your allies are bunched together so you can use a quick heal+. Here is a list of the dragon magics, though only when a warlock is holding the top four is he any threat to you. The other dragon magics don’t necessarily have to be held by a warlock either. Asteroid Hits all enemies with an earth attack 80 mp Mute Hits all enemies with an ice attack. It also stuns. 80 Tempest Hits all enemies with a wind attack 80 Wipe out Hits all enemies with a fire attack 80 Snapshot Turns self into a sword* 0 Entify Revives an ally, but kills the user. The only use in it I can see is if your priestess dies, and you’re pressed for revivify. Retissue Turns undead back to life.** *Snapshot takes the life of the user, and makes a very powerful sword that adds half the stats of the victim to the sword’s user. So basically, if a character has the stats 100 str, 100 vit, 100 int, and so on, you will have 50 more str, vit and int if you equip the sword. It starts to get really overpowered, but you can do some massive damage with the weapons equipped. Once used, snapshot returns to your inventory. ** If you use Necro on an undead, and then use retissue on them, they will turn into an amazon or a soldier, at level 1, except they have the same stats! I have gotten a ninja to 1 wt, so he basically gets 350 attack chances before the enemies, and with three orbs he can equip a weapon that weighs up to 31 pounds. However, when Necro is used on characters like Canopus or Guildus, not only do they lose their special class, but they also lose their place in the ending, as if they died in battle. Also, it doesn’t work on Denim, for obvious reasons. If you use snapshot on one of the boosted characters, the game really starts to lose any challenge it may have had. Finally, there are Relic Knights. They look like golden terror knights, but I’m fairly sure they don’t have the terror effect. Throughout HG, you might find one in a group of random enemies. They aren’t very difficult, but they drop ogre equipment, and if you put all four pieces of ogre equipment on one character, that character will be impervious to attacks (all damage equals 1). Also, relic knights start popping up as regular enemies in the upper 90s, but there will be no more than one in each battle, and sometimes they drop the dragon spell snapshot, which you can get multiple copies of. Other encounters You will end up fighting a lot of normal enemies throughout the dungeon you’ve seen before, such as hawk men, cockatrices, several kinds of dragons, and even some normal humans surprisingly enough. You will encounter several instances of undead, which will include zombie mages, death hydras and dragons, death knights, and loads of others. The only undead that is invulnerable to starion and exorcism are Lichs, but they don’t get up after you’ve killed them. There are also several monsters that look a lot like something you’ve encountered before, but they are actually just suped up versions of their normal selves with a tint of a different color. The only ones that I’ve had a large problem with are Krakens, which have done 350+ damage, to some of my defense characters, with Hazard at level 40. Here is a partial list of some of the things you’ll encounter, and a very brief description. None of the following can be persuaded. Phoenix Fire griffin Fire Brass Fire tiamat Basilisk Green dragon and has evil eyes. Salamander Fire Dragon Obinick Griffin Gabiar Lizard man Raven man Hawk man Ice Giant Ice Cyclops Gargoyle Tiamat, with toxic breath Iron Golem Golem with higher vitality, and Dragos (7r) Death Dragon Holy dragon, and has one breath attack Kraken Stronger octopus with Hazard (7r poison attack) Lucifer Crow Ice griffin Dark Ninja Dark Tiamat Dark Giant The only new enemies that you will encounter and are capable of persuading are Goblins (and hydras if you don’t count their appearance in the final dungeon). Goblins have a twenty percent chance to drop Glass pumpkins. If you sell Deneb 10 glass pumpkins, recruit ten pumpkin heads from her, then buy 255 items from her, you will be able to recruit her in her powered up form, in which she has the spell Nova+ and is leveled up more. And that’s it for now! oooooooooo Credits oooooooooo If you have anything to contribute, email me at kensaideity@comcast.net.