I don't understand this game? Can someone explain it to me?

[ChopShop]

I start the game take 3 steps, get into a fight. It takes a long time, but I eventually win. Feeling good about myself. Turn left get into another fight, this one is even longer and harder. Basically NONE of my characters "Did Not Penetrate" over and over again. All spells resisted. I toughed it out for about 20 mins and eventually won. I then rested because my brand new characters were messed up. Combat started during rest. This time even longer, the enemies had 3 attacks each round and blinded, charmed, & irritated my characters. None of my characters could penetrate their defenses. 42 minutes later !?!?!? They are down about 10% and all my characters are blinded and charmed. I just gave up

Is this normal? How is this fun? I don't understand any of it. I have never been so completely bored by a game so quickly. I never even had a chance to experience it.

[Oberon]

The game is very playable. It’s fairly hard in the beginning, but it quickly becomes easy (actually too easy) for at least the first third of third of the game. Work at it a little and you’ll see what I mean.

[mythmaker]

I agree with ChopShop. I've been playing RPG's since Ultima I on Apple II in the early 80's but this game is beyond me. It's like someone forgot to balance the gameplay in the beginning. Why create a game that punishes and hammers new players in the face over and over and over again right at the start? I'v played for close to 5 hours (GOG version) and still have never been able to leave that little section of Briar Patch without having my whole party get wiped out fighting flowers and caterpillars. Just awful. I have tried everything but none of my hits connect, none of my spells work and I don't see how I can lose 3 characters fighting a giant motionless blue flower. I'd refund if I could. I'm waiting for a trainer to come out - something that will give me a god mode for the first area of the game so I can just get my footing in this horribly difficult game.

[gameusurper]

This comment is a work-in-progress and will be added to as I find time and can gather my thoughts on each topic. I'm also doing it this way to make sure the post saves everything.

Hello, I just commented on a recent post very similar to yours with someone who is obviously also just starting out with the game, seeking advice, and I wrote a bunch of beginner tips for them here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/650670/discussions/0/4917340730748255043/
You might want to read that post (and the associated links I provide in it) and then come back here and continue with this one.

Beyond that however, I must agree with both ChopShop and mythmaker in that Grimoire is VERY unforgiving for first time players, even of this genre of game. I've played games like Arcana on the SuperNES that are far more balanced in regards to your ability to defeat normal enemies at the beginning of the game, which I feel is one of Grimoire's greatest failings.

It definitely takes a little experience to understand what your party is and is not capable of doing at the beginning of the game. Not to mention, reading the manual, and checking out the character creation, basics, and beginner's guides here on Steam, as well as the Grimoire Wiki. I see you've put another 32 or so hours into the game since you wrote your review of it, so I hope that perhaps you played some more and had an easier go of it. It definitely CAN be frustrating.

So, that being said, I have assembled some tips based on my personal experience with the game that will hopefully help you, and anyone else who wishes to try their hand at this very difficult game, a leg up over their opponents until they can catch their stride and get into the game.

From what you wrote in your original post, these are the problems I hear you having with the game so far. Please let me know if I am incorrect in my assessment.

*High Random Encounter Rate
*Length of Time Combat Takes
*Character's Inability to Penetrate Enemy Defenses and Cast Spells Successfully
*Getting Attacked While Resting
*Enemies Get Too Many Attacks and Hit You With Tons of Status Ailments
*And finally, "Is this normal?"

Based off what I hear you saying, I am going to provide some very targeted tips to help you try and understand the game better and hopefully get more enjoyment out of it. After all, being a game, that is kind of the point, right?

High Random Encounter Rate
There is a simple solution to this. In the 'Configuration' Settings menu, there are a few options for 'Wandering Monsters' frequency: Never?, Rare, Frequent, and Onslaught. I believe the game defaults to 'Frequent' if you've never changed that setting yet. Believe me, the game definitely lives up to this. Change it to 'Never?' and you will get very few random encounters. It probably has a question mark because you still DO get encounters, just not very many. Be aware this does not affect tiles in dungeons that have mini-bosses or bosses set to always appear on that tile no matter what.

You can change the frequency of random encounters at any time while playing the game, so feel free to set it to Never? if you are having a hard time getting through an area due to the amount of enemies. Just be aware that not fighting and winning some of the random battles will leave you much lower level than you should be and much more vulnerable to running into mini-bosses or bosses that you simply cannot beat because you lack the HP, MP, attributes or spells to deal with them properly. You can then set it back to Rare, Frequent or even Onslaught to fight more frequently once you are back in an area you know you can handle the monsters.

Length of Time Combat Takes
You can easily speed up how fast the messages appear in combat by holding the 'Enter' key, or simply by clicking the text or viewport windows. Be careful though, as doing this can make you easily miss things important to knowing what is going on, causing you unnecessary deaths. Obviously, the length of time combat takes also is dependent on how much more powerful the enemies are than your characters and if your party is having trouble landing hits or penetrating the enemy's defenses. That aspect of combat length is going to be dealt with next.

Character's Inability to Penetrate Enemy Defenses and Cast Spells Successfully

Getting Attacked While Resting - Safe Havens & Resting
There are certain tiles in most zones of the game called 'Safe Havens' which you can rest on and never be attacked. Most zones with enemies will have at least one of these tiles, some zones even have more than one. Briarpatch Woods has 2, and Crowl Village has 4 or 5. Also, if a zone doesn't seem to have any random encounters, it is usually safe to sleep anywhere in that zone. There are a few different ways to discover which tiles are Safe Havens in a zone so you know exactly which ones they are.

*Anybody who has at least 1 in Scouting can stumble across them and let you know that they are safe for resting.

*Any spell caster with the spell 'Detect Secret' can use this to discern tiles that are safe as well. The little detect secret eye will flash on a tile that is a Safe Haven. If you run your cursor over all the walls that are adjacent to that tile and don't find any secret buttons that open up new passages, chances are that tile is a Safe Haven.

Once you have identified that a tile is in fact a Safe Haven, that particular tile will always show up as a 'Z' icon (meaning 'z' as in 'zzz' to represent sleeping) if you click and hold on the little campfire button that is underneath the map of that area on the 'Orienteer' map screen. You must have already identified the tile as a Safe Haven for that button to show it.

If you MUST try and rest when not on a Safe Haven tile, there is a spell that the Sage, Wizard, and Cleric classes all get access to at Level 3 called 'Magic Bells'. If you cast this spell prior to trying to rest, it will try and alert your party if a group of monsters happens upon you while you are resting and rouse them from their slumber. It is an area affect spell that sticks around for a while, so you only need to cast it once for the whole party before resting, not on each individual character. Take note that this spell does in no way prevent random encounters from happening while you are sleeping. It also only increases the likelihood that characters will wake up at the start of the battle, it does not guarantee they will do so.

And remember that you do not have to sleep the whole night (or however long the game considers a full night's sleep). You can sleep only until a portion or all of your HP, Vitality, and MP gauges are full and then wake up by pressing 'Enter' or clicking the text window.

Enemies Get Too Many Attacks and Hit You With Tons of Status Ailments

And finally, "Is this normal?"

Future Topics:
Combat Tactics
Leveling Up Skills
The 5 Starting Locations
Good Zones for Low Level Characters
Benefits of Creating Your Own Party

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by mythmaker:

I agree with ChopShop. I've been playing RPG's since Ultima I on Apple II in the early 80's but this game is beyond me. It's like someone forgot to balance the gameplay in the beginning. Why create a game that punishes and hammers new players in the face over and over and over again right at the start? I'v played for close to 5 hours (GOG version) and still have never been able to leave that little section of Briar Patch without having my whole party get wiped out fighting flowers and caterpillars. Just awful. I have tried everything but none of my hits connect, none of my spells work and I don't see how I can lose 3 characters fighting a giant motionless blue flower. I'd refund if I could. I'm waiting for a trainer to come out - something that will give me a god mode for the first area of the game so I can just get my footing in this horribly difficult game.

Most stuff doesn't really work at the start of the game, spells mostly fizz at low levels, attacks miss at low levels, music fails at low levels, but once you get a level up or so and get some skills up, things start to improve quickly and dramatically.

What do you do? Win a battle, and your next battle will be easier. Save often.

Also, unequip your weapons. Races like Lizards and Dragons, etc, hit for more damage unarmed than with any of the weapons you start with, and I believe with better accuracy too. I think even rat men do decent unarmed, and I believe they can proc lethal blow from their unarmed attacks as well, because I had a rat assassin that I left unarmed, and he got a bunch of lethal blows.

The first time I played this I had a couple of lizards as warriors, and I saw a post suggesting I use them unarmed, and to be perfectly honest weapon attacks weren't really superior to lizard unarmed damage until very late in the first segment of the game, where I started getting weapons like Caliburnus, etc, and stuff from the key chests.

If you had a modicum of patience, and acted like a Gen Xer instead of an entitled millennial, then you would have noticed how quickly skills level up by simply using them in battle. Attacking and missing still contributes to skill point gains. There are plenty of easy enemy groups you could have beaten with a couple of unarmed lizards or rats attacking, and without losing anyone. If you had actually taken the time to even try that, you would have figured it out, and not made this post.

What happened was you got owned in your first battle, and came on here to whine about it. You might have gotten unlucky with your first fight, but in most of those old school RPG games, if you got ambushed by the wrong group of mobs, it was probably game over or multiple characters dead. That's just the way these types of games are. And Grimoire is no different. You'll run into hornets later on that have a lethal blow effect that can randomly oneshot your characters. The way you beat it is to have higher speed characters pick them off before they can act, or something like a high speed bard put them to sleep, or paralyze them with music.

Also, I absolutely do not recommend mage heavy parties in this for new players. They got extremely low HP at the beginning and are slow to get going. Usually around level 6 or so they start to pick up, but their HP will still be trash until after you multi-class them a few times. I recommend putting bonus points into HP at the start, if you do use them. This might allow them to survive 1 hit instead of getting gibbed in 1 hit for sure.