Code Hazard Demo for Newbies

When you play the Code Hazard demo, there's a few things you should keep in mind.

First of all, the demo only has two missions. These missions, if you know how to complete them, can last you all of 10 minutes. Fortunately, there's much more to do.

You're given access to two dungeons, which have 3 and 2 floors, respectively. The level cap in the demo is only 3, so you may not be able to survive, but you can at least explore and see what dungeons are like. You can also load your demo party into the full game, so don't hold back!

Character creation is unrestricted. Create the party you want and have fun experimenting with different party formations. Xth 2 and Xth 3 (Code Breaker and Code Realize) have import data functions. You can take one team of characters all the way up to level 99!

The crafting system is also unrestricted. Experiment with crafting and upgrading weapons and items. Upgrading weapons and armor in particular is very cheap, especially at low levels. It's a very easy power boost. You also need to utilize the Dev Lab to create items that let you move up and down floors in dungeons.

Generation Xth is very deep and challenging. Hope you enjoy it.

Tips:
-Use a PS2 or similar controller.
-Press F6/Sub4 (defaults to Select button) to quickly see your party's Blood codes and Types while comparing or crafting items.
-Press Sub3 (default Start) while in the Equip sub-menu to remove the GUI and view your character's mannequin in all their glory.
-READ THE MANUAL at the Info PC. It has tons of good information.
-Read through the Dev Lab recipes carefully to learn which combination of items can do what. Here's a helpful one: 5 MT Skin + 5 MT Fiber = 1 MT Metal II. 1 MT Metal II can be broken into 10 MT Metal I. Learn these combinations to save tons of precious GP.
-Combine stacks of consumables or materials constantly to see if there's a higher level item you haven't discovered yet. Play with weapon/armor and plugin combinations.
-Supernatural enemies (Su) are naturally resistant to physical attacks, and you can tell this by most weapons displaying Su (by Malform) in red. Combine a weapon with an Energy plugin to deal normal damage to ghosts!
-Relax while in stations/midpoints and read the NPC chat bubbles. You can learn a lot about the world/lore.


General Wizardrylike tips:
-Don't pay to identify items. Use a Scholar's Identify skill and cure him at the Med Lab if he gets Fear.
-Don't waste money on healing HP at the Med Lab. Use up your Cleric or Paladin's Heal codes and only rest them instead, unless you need to gain a level.
-Don't forget you can expend GP for EXP in Surgery just like other Wizardrylikes in case one character dies often and loses EXP.
-Carry generic spell effect items in your Subdisk in case a spellcaster dies or runs out of MP. Enfloat, Entorch, Care, and Return Gate are essential.

Well, I've worked my way through the demo release, and, strangely, didn't encounter any errors or crashes. The dialogue's a little dry in places, but I get the feeling that's more the game's fault. I'm going to go through it again later and just dick about, see if I can do anything to wreck it, but I felt it was worth saying that I am now more excited for this game than ever. I can easily see myself losing hundreds of hours to this, and not just because of the difficulty.

That's good to hear The dialogue can be a little dry. If you have any suggestions for improving it in places let me know.

I spent about 50 hours doing not quite everything in Code Hazard with one team of characters. I could have easily spent an extra 10 dicking about with other characters and grinding for the best equipment without getting tired, but I was eager to try Breaker and work on the translation

looking forward to the first playthrough. Love the art style. Sigh... Off to work for now.

Just some basic things I've discovered while playing that may be useful for a wider audience after the demo is out... it's also very possible some of them don't apply to the full game either.
- Bonus attribute points during character creation are random; getting more than 6 points is rare, getting more than 8 is VERY rare.
- In typical dungeon crawlers for the PC, spellcasters are expected to cast spells all the time. However, this game is faithful to the classics (early Wizardries, Bard's Tale games) in that the number of spells you can cast is very limited, you can only rest back at the base, and resting costs money to boot! To balance this out, spells are very powerful (well ok, level 2 Heal codes and most Psi codes are situational), and they are likely what will make the difference between faceplanting against a tough boss and winning the fight effortlessly. For reference, my basic level 1 nuke spell hits four times as hard as my best fighter's melee attack.
- This also means that most of the time your casters will probably be beating on things with staves (EXEs in case of scientist characters) which should be a high priority to procure ASAP -- both as a quicker way to clear out weak enemy groups, and a way to conserve magic power against tougher foes. I generally don't cast attack spells on non-boss monsters at or below my level, unless they're mantises or strong against physical attacks. Not sure how (or if) this changes after the cleric classes unlock that magic regeneration skill.
- Starting a character older than 16 only seems to carry drawbacks - you can lose your character completely if they get too old (I'll never understand this youth fixation in Japanese games, but hey). It's sort of like the karma score in the Wizardry games, only it goes up instead of down.
- Skimping on pure casters is possible (though probably not a good idea early on), but having a scientist (Moses/Joshua) is absolutely critical for loot purposes.
- Just as with other Wizardries, weapons with reach are awesome, even on your frontliners. FWIW I keep an archer as a frontliner character -- it remains to be seen whether this'll work out later. If the front row of enemies is not very threatening (and/or incapacitated), your fighters with M/L/LL weapons can take pot shots at the tougher row of baddies in row 2 without them being able to retaliate (unless they spend a turn to move up or have ranged weapons of their own), or coordinate with your casters to take out a hard target hiding behind meatshields.
- Crafting and upgrading are very powerful. I got enough materials to make some level 2/3 weapons and armor for my characters just from the encounters while exploring the tutorial dungeon basically for free. Crafting can take up a lot of precious storage space, so I just dump materials in the almost-infinite databank back at the base whenever possible and do all my crafting from there.

Nice tips! For what its worth, level 2 HEAL codes, particularly Antifear and Scanning are there to assist in looting. Scanning can replace a Scholar's search on a code chip, but disabling the trap is something else altogether. Luckily, most traps aren't TOO deadly until later levels. You can equip another character with high INT or LUC with +TECH items if you want to try a playthrough without a Scholar. Antifear is good when identifying items in dungeons and the Scholar fails and becomes afraid, and since you won't be using Mana Guard or Team Search too often, it's probably the best use of HEAL2 codes.

And Archers are quite good. I'm not 100% certain but I believe they have the same spell growth as Scholars so they may be a good replacement. They also work out great in the front row, as they can use a wide variety of armors. I may change their name to Ranger to better suit their feel. Keep this in mind: you can change equipment in battle freely. Throw a bunch of high-level arrows in an Archer's inventory, each with a different element and malform type, and you have the best single damage dealer in the game.