https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/elona/images/8/89/Wiki-wordmark.png
Some people here may remember the past two Elona threads which, according to the forums, were around 9 and 10 years ago. For those who don't or need a refresher, Elona (Eternal League of Nefia) is a roguelike with JRPG elements (notably grinding and classic jap humor) that became notorious on several websites due to the various oddities and freedoms in the game. Departing from standard Roguelike fashion, the game offers a lot to do outside of dungeon diving including opening a shop, upgrading and decorating a house, running a farm, prostituting yourself, doing menial jobs for citizens, and genetically fusing your pet little girl with the latest eldritch horror you captured for that last skill she's missing.
People tended to get a bit lost however once they got past becoming a world renown whore and slave trader, primarily because of the games second aspect- grinding. Grinding shops/dungeons for gear, spells for levels, skills for money, etc. Much of the game tends to be focused on grinding one skill or another, and while this was a giant pain in the past, I'm posting this thread to hopefully convince people that they have some options to ease that pain now.
History
Noa began development of the original Elona game in 2006, and ceased development some time after that, leaving the playerbase split between two versions- 1.16 stable, and 1.22 beta. Sometime after he stopped, he released the source code. Several branch projects (or variants) emerged from this, with the most popular among japanese players being Omake and it's own variants due to the quality of life changes, improved and added systems such as running a town and item fusion, and for staying faithful to the original.
However, Omake never had the same english translation that vanilla had, and so never became popularized among western players. Instead, Elona+, another variant by Ano, received rudimentary translations and became the standard for western players (aside from those chosing to stick with 1.16 or 1.22, as will be discussed later). These translations were later improved upon with the release of Elona+ Custom, an english-targetted modification of Elona+. The mod added several things such as improved english translations, restoring cutscenes present in the japanese version, exporting a ton of string data to be edited without recompiling, and a robust system for customizing pet AI. It also sparked a wave of tinkering by other players, as it released a decompiled version of the Elona+ source with it, along with steps on recompiling it and how to decompile further versions.
As of recently, a joint effort between English and Japanese Elona discords has resulted in a basic translation of omake being available, breaking Ano's vice grip on the English community (Act 3 completed, Vanilla Outdated, Long have we waited, Omake Translated).
Notable Gameplay Quirks
Gameplay is similar across all variants. You go around the world, make money doing job board quests present in every town, and raid dungeons for their loot and experience. There's a main quest, however it's not terribly important. It follows generic end-of-the-world tropes, where you have to dive down a dungeon called Lesimas to stop the big bad, except you're basically another nameless adventurer and will never receive any credit.
Combat is standard among roguelikes, you either bump into stuff to do a melee attack, press 'f' to fire a ranged weapon at a target, or use a spell/ability. The magic system however is unique. You not only need mana to cast a spell, but also the casting level to successfully cast it, and spell stock. You gain stock by reading a corresponding spellbook, and it gets used each cast. To read a spellbook, you need an appropriate amount of literacy, or else bad stuff happens. If you successfully read one, you get an amount of spell stock dependent both on your current stock, and your memorization skill. And once you've done all those steps, you can finally start to grind up the spell level unique to each spell. So yeah, new people usually just bash themselves into stuff.
Skills all have a potential attached to them, which is a percentage ranging from 0% to 400%. This basically acts as a modifier for incoming xp- higher potential, more effective xp.This potential decreases when a skill is levelled up, and can be increased by paying a trainer platinum, a currency gained from job board quests and clearing dungeons. The potential system is aimed at stopping mindless grinding of a skill for hours, forcing you to go do presumably more interesting stuff between grind sessions.
You can have a party of up to 2 pets, plus one more for every 5 charisma past 10, to a total of 15 extra pets. They're extremely important, and while you can play the game without them, it's always more fun to adventure with a party! Each pet has it's own skills and equipment slots. Skills and body slots can be added to pets through gene engineering, a skill letting you merge pets together to empower one. It's rather complicated, so definitely check out the wiki page for it.
Variants
Elona Vanilla - The original, coming in two flavors (1.16 and 1.22) depending on if you liked the changes made in the beta. Development ceased some time ago, but it retains a sizeable playerbase, particularly among English speakers who disliked Ano's changes in plus.
Elona+ - The only english variant for a long time. Added two new story acts and corresponding continents, pet evolution, artifact fusion, new pot of fusion crafting (uses items instead of materials), and the AP system for further powering your characters and pets. Also reduced early-game difficulty, reduced difficulty of being a mage, and increased late-game difficulty. Controversial due to it's own interpretation and extension of the lore, along with questionable balance in the late game (Enemy resist scaling makes mages difficult later, enemy skill scaling causes many playstyles like dodge and ranged to fall off hard without extra grinding, Ano's hardon for martial arts). However it remains the most stable and popular variant among english speakers. Also includes multiple modes like Overdose, where you get roughly 25x the exp for everything, Loss Mode which features true permadeath (cant load the save after you die, and the game is saved as soon as you die.), and the newly added Purge mode, where you get 1-hit kill skills and everything dies.
Custom - A modification of plus. Adds in more english translations, several toggleable tweaks, and a robust AI customization system that tries its best to keep itself balanced (beware red eyes white rabbit). Little reason not to grab it if you're playing Plus and speak english since it avoids balance-breaking changes, and all of it's features are opt-in.
Newbie Overhaul - A huge overhaul mod that makes sweeping changes to game balance, including the removal of spell stock, increased chances to get treasure maps, introducing a floor to skill potentials of 100, and the removal of a lot of costs or penalties. Makes the game incredibly easy, how much so varies on how much you abuse things like stock-less meteor. Only recommended if you just want to take a stroll through Irva and see all of the game's content in less time than usual. Based on Elona+ Custom 1.72
Amylona - Another overhaul mod. Changes game balance, though not to the degree the above variant does. Includes the removal of item loss on death, removing equipment spellcasting penalties, and reverting spelling corrections to keep the original engrish charm of the game. Last update was for Elona+ Custom 1.73.
Omake - Variant of Elona 1.22. Includes a ton of new content, the scale of which is comparable to Elona+. However, rather than expanding vertically, the variant sticks to Act I and expands horizontally, adding a lot of stuff within the confines of the vanilla setting. Changes include player-run towns, new recipes, bug fixes, crafting pets, and a ton of stuff revolving around Younger Sisters, such as Younger sister day and a custom version of Ragnarok. Recently translated, but not considered stable as of yet.
Tips
Avoid magic on a first playthrough. It's dangerous, difficult to start with, and leads to more frustration in searching for spell books. Weapon based combat is much easier to jump in with.
Don't do dungeons until you have either decent pets, a lot of pets, or decent gear. hunting jobs will get you manageable early gear, and a full set early is more important than a few skill levels.
If you read guides or tips, check the version they were made for, or date posted. A lot of guides have become outdated over the years, depending on your variant and version. For example, Fairies were a race balanced for a game where Act 1 is the only content, and don't hold up well in Elona+ late game, where crits are common, bypassing your evasion. Furthermore, a lot of "meta" guides and such are for Act 2/3 of Elona+, where what's viable becomes tighter. Anything goes in Act 1, and generally what's good later isn't good early (Martial Arts for example).
Stick with a human/balanced race to start with (Eulderna, Juere, Elea, Yerles). They have nice, balanced stats with slight inclinations (Warmage, Archer/Performer, Wizard, Archer/Farmer)
Surrender to bandits until you get some rods of teleportation, then you can try zapping yourself close enough to the edge to run away.
Do cargo runs early for money, along with escort quests. Don't do any quests with tight deadlines, or that go across the map.
Wish for 'seven league boots' as soon as you can, they open your possibilities for missions.
Avoid performing for audiences till your performer is about 30 in Elona+. At that point, you should be able to beat party time quests and avoid getting stoned mosto f the time. Don't play the piano in Vernis' bar.
Pay your taxes past level 6. Not doing so will lower your karma. Past -30, Guards will KOS you, and shopkeepers will not talk to you.
Identify items before eating, using, reading, or equipping them. The cost may seem steep, but identified items will show up identified next time you see them, with the only things left being cursed/blessed status and charges.
Media and Resources
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Wiki - Elona Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia
Reddit - Here
Discord - Discord
Gigantic /jp/ pastebin including guides and tips - Elona+ Custom Info
Kai's playthrough - Here
The Trooth's Tutorial Series ( By our very own loofiloo ) - Here
Sseth's Review - https://youtu.be/Y9gOQxHX83E
Sorry if I left anything out, but this game is huge and I could easily go on for hours and pages writing stuff.
There's a farmer start you can do in Elona+ that's grindy as fuck but nets you a lot of money and platinum coins a lot faster than playing like a normal roguelike. You don't fight much for like 10 or so hours of gameplay, but once you get enough skills and money to buy decent gear you get to start doing combat stuff and become like a normal character except with a huge backup of utility skills if you want more platinum. I always had trouble starting a basic melee character, then I decided to give that farmer start a try and I have a pretty ridiculous character now.
Yeah, Gardening is a universally useful skill. Early on it gives you fruits and veggies to cook for selling/eating purposes. Later on, you get gems for pets and sacrifices, along with good chances at rods of wishing if you harvest magic trees during the right seasons. And finally you get herb farms, the best foods in the game, especially with the herb-in recipe in Elona+. Once you get those, turning every meal into an herb meal really starts to powerlevel your attributes up to around 150 each. You start getting levelups less frequently there, but they're always good for your pets, who get much more xp out of them, and they still give the best XP in the game.
You just have to make sure you dont powerlevel gardening too hard. Monsters on the farm scale to your gardening level, meaning if you focus gardening too hard, you can die to some shoebills, grand moles, or cockatrices really early on.
The Trooth's Tutorial Series ( By our very own loofiloo ) - Here
Ayyy thanks for the shoutout.
This game is an old favorite of mine, I like to help people learn it whenever I can.
I think lots of builds have the potential to be really grindy, but that's the thing about this game, there's always something else to be grinding.
Magic-based characters are my favorite, I feel like just a basic magic arrow has such a high potential to become OP versus any melee or ranged build. Melee fighters and bow/gun users seem to get somewhat bottlenecked by their equipment, whereas mages just grow stronger and stronger with time.
If anyone's on the fence btw Elona is fucking great. It's like a simple roguelike overlaid with several layers of abstraction and absurdism. Strongly recommend.
I completely agree, magic is just as viable as any other route and has a lot of potential for fun and interesting playstyles, like casting water bolt, elemental scar, and following up with thunder vortex for massive damage. In my opinion though, it's confusing for new players to jump in with it, and I'd probably suggest at most a warmage till they get more used to the magic system, since early on your options are limited and you run the unique risk of running out of stock in the middle of a fight, and having to hunt for magic dart books can be frustrating before getting into the mages guild and investing in shops.
I play elona plus with custom. The rebalance it is way better than the original elona. I should really finish it up, I end up always just dropping it on act 2. Oh also pick a god when you start the game, you can do that by going to the shrine north of palmia. Having a god to worship just gives you stats boost depending on your faith skill.
Hey OP, you hotlinked pictures from 4chan. They broke.
Is it playable without the 10-key? My current keyboard doesn't have the 10-key due to desk size and It makes me sad because I can't play games like DF easily anymore due to the horrible controls without the 10-key board style layout.
It's less advisable but you can also move using the arrow keys. It's just not as good because diagonal movement will be a lot harder.
Actually I'm not 100% sure, some menu navigation also uses numpad keys, and I don't remember if there are alternatives.
Well, that's embarrassing! I went and reuploaded them to imgur, so hopefully they won't break again. Thanks for the heads up!
If your talking about the numpad (don't know keyboard slang and it was the first result on google, correct me otherwise!) then yes, you can. I actually move primarily with the arrow keys. However, you'll find it difficult to do diagonals. If you press two arrow keys at the same time it may register, but sometimes you get unlucky. While the 0 there can be used to pickup items, 'g' also works. The only replacement I'm not sure of would be selecting yourself for directional abilities, usually done with '5' on the numpad, and a couple utility actions (like setting no-drop and tracking skills) are done with the '*' on the numpad. However, the config.txt with the game can supposedly rebind keys, though I have no experience with that.
That's interesting, that's not been my experience at all and it isn't listed on the wiki. You might be thinking of monsters on your farm, which might be the case because I sometimes get some rough monsters spawning there.
Yeah, my bad! Didn't even think of the harvest time area when posting, but yeah, meant to say your farm, the property. I'm not sure if monsters on harvest time quests scale at all, but your farm can get some real nasty nasties spawning if you rush through gardening too fast.
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https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109692/99a1c767-0861-43b6-a6f3-212fe8494a0f/777777.PNG
Yep, it's my favorite roguelike.
I really loved this game, I used to spend hours just making my properties look good.
Time to start playing again I think.
Definitely should, it's a fun game with a lot of possibilities for some good times. Like having a drunk patron at a party cause Ragnarok
https://i.imgur.com/uVKKQYR.png
Definitely had fun with this a couple months back.
Returned from playing Wurm to update the thread a bit:
Amylona got a release for Elona+ 1.76fix.
Elona+ updated to 1.77, bringing along some changes to ranching. some rebalances to gravity attacks, new special actions, and closing off a bug letting players get unlimited poison bottles through snow.
Elona+ Custom has also been updated to work with Elona+ 1.77.
Omake now has a translated readme, thanks to Doorknob from the main discord.
For the sake of fairness, I've also added a link to an alternative discord made by a disgruntled community member. The link leads to the thread where they explain their reasoning. Join whichever you want (or both)!
Elona is a magical journey where the cure for Pregnancy is a bottle of Sulfuric Acid and you raise speed by eating shoes.
Two big things today:
Omake Overhaul has finally gotten an initial english translation, thanks to the work of the many folks on the main elona discord! The thread post about it is here. The OP will be updated shortly describing it.
Elona+ 1.78 has been released. This comes after 1.77 had been taken down for being distributed with an unlicensed image (in this case, the image for the younger sister mansion had been licensed to noa, but ano was distributing it with his variant). 1.78 Brings a thirst mechanic, the beginnings of the Act 4 continent, and some other goodies. A link to it is available here, and the OP will be updated when the usual forum post goes up for it.
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