Lunatic Dawn III

• Lunatic Dawn 3 is the weakest game in the trilogy by far, and makes much more sense when you understand that it's a re-release of a long-dead MMO with all of the multiplayer functionality removed. What you're supposed to do in the game you were largely intended to learn from other players, so you'll probably want to look up in a guide somewhere as you probably won't figure it out yourself. Just make sure you're not looking up info on the PS1 version, which is very different.

• What alignments/stats you pick during character/world creation is largely irrelevant as just about everything other than your sex can be changed later.

• Skills level individually, but won't actually increase until you spend points from your stat point pool (you start with 192). You can see how much experience points you have in each skill by going to a guide in an inn, ask them to find someone for you, and then select yourself.

• If you die, you lose 50% of your gold and are sent back to your home or, if you die in a parallel dimension, your homeworld. Dying also shaves a year off your lifespan.

• Early on it's best to take simple delivery quests since they're low-risk. The inn keeps tabs of all the quests that are available in the world, and if you don't know where the quest giver/location is, in each inn there's a guide that will tell you the location of just about everything in your current world for 10GP a pop.

• Your character's stats start to permanently decay at age 40 and will be halved by the time they reach 50. It's a good idea to get married and have kids early so you have an heir ready and waiting by that time. (Children are eligible to adventure when they hit 12)

• Alignment is really important in this game and affects everything. There's the "faith alignment" along Order/Chaos and Spark/Moon axes, the "elemental alignment" along Fire/Air and Earth/Water axes, and then a hidden "magic alignment" that ranges from Magic/Mechanical. You only get a Faith alignment, but your actions will affect the others of your homeworld too. E.G. if your homeword is a desert world and you start enchanting things with water magic, your world will get wetter and wetter and can eventually even turn into a rainforest.

• When using attack magic, it's important to remember that each spell has a faith alignment and an elemental alignment, and each enemy has resistances to both which makes a difference. As an example dragons only have 5% resistance to Earth magic so that's the best type of spell to use, but they have 60% resistance to Chaos so Grand Shake (a Chaos/Earth spell) won't work so well; you'd want to pick Grand Nail (Order/Earth) since they only have 20% resistance to Order. (They have 5% resistance to Spark but Spark/Earth is a healing spell so you can't use it against them)

• Item mixing is really important but recipes aren't documented in-game anywhere so you have to figure them out by trial and error or looking them up online. The latter option is probably better, but if you want to go it on your own, most consumable items can be mixed. For equipment, mixing an item with another of the same type but slightly better will often create something better than either ingredients.

• There are some recipes that can only be mixed in the Dwarf World. These tend to be pretty off the wall so you'll probably need to look them up in a guide online to figure them out. The item to get to the last boss can only be made through one such recipe.

• Black Lily + Lotus Seed can be mixed to create an unlimited-use status curing items. Make it early as ailments are a real annoyance.

• It's not displayed in their stats, but most heavy armor, shields, and some weapons tank your Magic stat. If you find your spells totally ineffective, you might want to change up your equipment to see if something you're equipping is the culprit. Anything mechanical (guns, super electromagnetic yoyo, anything with Type 089 in the name) will render your magic completely useless.

• There are 7 "special" dimensions inhabited by nonhumans. There are special rare items that can be offered to a Link Gate to go to each, but 5 of them can be traveled to normally. Divide the current year of whatever dimension you're in by 6 and add 1 to the remainder; that's the number of the month that the special dimension will be accessible. Note that unlike traveling to a normal parallel dimension, traveling to a special dimension will consume the item you use on the link gate, so use a trash disposable item.

• There are 9 "alignment" worlds you'll need to go to in order to get the items you need to beat the game--four elemental worlds, four faith worlds, and then a machine world. All require special items that drop from enemies. The Machine World item can be gotten from robots which are (relatively) common. Elemental items can be gotten from elemental monsters that sometimes spawn in special worlds. Faith world items can only be gotten from Zealots, which spawn in your home town when it reaches a large size and your homeworld reaches a Faith alignment extreme. (e.g. Chaos Zealots will spawn if your world goes full Order and drop the item you need to go to the Chaos World)

• Recruiting nonhumans to your party from the special dimensions requires a special "translation" item that can be found in alignment dimensions, either as rare drops from specific monsters or in dungeon chests. Nonhumans can be surprisingly tough even without equipment but are otherwise the same as humans. E.g. you can marry and have kids with them, but the offspring of your character and a giant sentient sunfish/talking eggplant/stick figure will still be an ordinary human.

• There is, in fact, a goal to the game and a final boss, but you'd never know just from what you learn in-game. You need to mix a special item to teleport to a special world where the last boss lives, but you can only do that in the Dwarf world, and the recipes you need to create the components are largely from ultra-rare drops in the various alignment worlds. If you get stuck, you might want to just use a tool like Cheat Engine to spawn the special item in your inventory (it's item #83).