Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[octavius]

So you need one Good party and one Evil party in Wiz 3. How clever.
I rolled up an Evil Fighter and Evil Priest in Wiz 1 and transfered them to Wiz 3. After some grinding with my experienced Neutral guys they went up to lvl 5 and I was all set to go the Evil path. But when I re-assembled my Evil party the Evil Fighter had suddenly turned Good, I assume from letting friendly monster groups live.

So you really do need two parties.
But how do you explain the existance of two separate parties, both of which have defeated Werdna and gained the Staff of Gnilda? One party, with replacements when you characters get Lost, is one thing, but two separate parties don't make much sense IMO.
Although it does give me an excuse to replay Wiz 1, using me new gained knowledge to create a "perfect" party. OTOH I'm starting to get slightly tired of Wizardry and want to finish Wiz 3 soon...

BTW, anyone know if Neutral characters turn Evil if attacking friendlies?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

But how do you explain the existance of two separate parties, both of which have defeated Werdna and gained the Staff of Gnilda? One party, with replacements when you characters get Lost, is one thing, but two separate parties don't make much sense IMO.

Party A splits into Party B and Party C due to ideological differences and butthurt over divvying up the loot.

 

[Sceptic]

IIRC your Wiz3 party isn't the same as your Wiz1 party, lore-wise. Your Wiz1 party goes on as is to Wiz2, then their descendants are the PCs in Wiz3.

 

[octavius]

Oh well, it's easy enough to change alignment between Good and Evil by leaving alone or attacking the groups of friendly Garians you find in the Castle.
So in practice it means that if you avoid Lords and Ninjas (assuming they can't change alignment that easy) you can do with one party. Not sure how it works with Priest and Bishops, though, who have to be either Good or Evil. For the time being I'm having one Priest of either alignment.

 

[octavius]

Damned, those Death spell spamming Priests of Fung in Wiz 3 are annoying! I had to boldly make a tactical retreat from their HQ.

After a very hard start the game has had about the same difficulty as Wiz 1. After I restarted I have not had a single party death so far and only a few character deaths.

The game has grown on me after a grindy start. Level design is more intricate than in the former games and it takes a while to map them. The encounters tend to be a bit samey (reminds me of Wiz 7 in that regard), but the loot is more interesting than in Wiz 1.

So now the question for my Evil party is: try slaughter those moldy priests without getting heart attacks, or brave the Dark, anti-magic area?

EDIT: I found a third path, but it's blocked by a riddle:
I am one of the deck of seventy-eight,
and victory I foretell

Two bold steeds draw me forth,
and stars shines from my brow.

What card am I?

I had a hunch it might be a Tarot card, so I looked it up on Wikipedia which confirms it uses 78 cards. But which card?
It's rather unfair of a game to assume knowledge of such superstisious nonsense.

Further research on Wikipedia convinced me it must be The Chariot, which also fits with having found The Staff of Earth (which broke after one fucking use?!?) and the Amulet of Air:
"The Thoth Tarot deck has the figure controlling four different animals, representing the four elements."

But how the hell would a snotty faced little me had known that, or even known where to look for the answer, back in 1983?

 

[Chamezero]

Which Wizardry is the most representative (not necessarily the best) of the series? In combat mechanics I mean.

 

[octavius]

Which Wizardry is the most representative (not necessarily the best) of the series? In combat mechanics I mean.

Probably 5 (if I'm not mistaken it introduced the Hiding and Ambushing skills for the Thieves, making them no longer useless in combat), 6 or 7. I think 6 introduced Critical Hits as skill and not just an innate Ninja ability, unless that was 5 too.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I'd say 7.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Which Wizardry is the most representative (not necessarily the best) of the series? In combat mechanics I mean.

There are actually 3 different systems used over the series (not including Wiz4, which is it's own thing where you control the end-boss from Wiz 1):
(1) the Llygemann saga - Wiz 1-5.
(2) Wiz 6 and 7 (the first 2 entries in the Dark Savant trilogy)
(3) Wiz 8 (the last in the Dark Savant trilogy - the system is a continuation of that from 6 and 7, but there are enough differences to consider it a separate system, especially relating to enemies now appearing in the world and requiring tactical formations/snares/battlefield-control instead of list-combat).

Wiz 1-3 use literally the same system, with a very small number of balance changes. I'd tell you to start with Wiz 3, but there's a character carry-over system from Wiz 1, and you actually NEED to have played Wiz 1 and carried your party over in order to play Wiz 2 (great commercial sense in those days).

Wiz 5 is probably the most representative, in that it's the Wiz 1-3 system, but with some of the niceties from later games starting to make their appearance. In particular, whilst ninjas and lords are still elite prestige classes, instead of something you might select in a standard build, the stat requirements aren't quite so obscene as Wiz 1-3, and you don't need to wait until the last level of the dungeon to get a chance of the item dropping that you need for a character to switch to that class. In Wiz 1, even after getting the item that lets you switch from thief to ninja, it was near impossible to meet the stat requirements prior to beating the game - ninjas and lords were really something that you would switch a character to before having your party go beat the game a second time, or in preparation for transfer to Wiz 2.

But there isn't strictly a 'most representative', due to the above changes in system.

 

[octavius]

So my Good party suddenly reached the lair of L'kbreth on lvl 6 in Wiz 3 and had to retreat. They were unable to hit her with weapons or spells, but fortunately her attacks and breath were not too dangerous. Weird thing is that during the battle the combat window kept spamming messages that "WHICH IS NEUTRALIZED". 'sup with that?
I guess I have to come up with a cunning plan involving the Crystal of Good to defeat her.
And I guess those accursed Priests of Fung are hiding the Crystal of Evil in their HQ.

It looks like the game is only six levels (but with more content than the Wiz 2 levels), but I'm surprised I haven't met any tougher monsters. So far the Priests of Fung have been the most dangerous ones due to their numbers and their Death spells. Haven't seen any Giants, Vampires, Demons or generic Dragons yet.

 

[octavius]

I seem to be unable to get past a group of about 15 Priests of Fung in Wiz 3 without at least one of my guys dying and forcing me to retreat.
I Googled Priest(s) of Fung, but didn't get many results. Doesn't seem like many people have played Wiz 3 since the Internet became popular, or else I'm the only one having problems. What can rid me of those troubleome priests (before they get rid of me)? Too bad there's no items (none that's I've found so far, at least) or buffing spells that help protect against those Death spells.

 

[octavius]

Well, it looks like the Priests of Fung have defeated me in Wiz 3. There are at least four connected rooms with them to plough through to get the Crystal of Evil. Since they appear in 2-4 groups with 4-9 Priests in each it's extremely difficult to survive 4+ battles, with them spamming BADI (insta-kill in most cases) and BADIALMA (3-24 damage). Killing any one group is not a big problem. The problem is making sure the whole party survives to face the next group, and not knowing excactly how many groups I must face. I assume there's a High Priest at the end of all those rooms.

I restored the game to where my best Mage was still alive, but he's still only lvl 11, so it would mean a hell of a lot of grinding to get even one TILTOWAIT.

To make matters worse it's almost impossible to get decent stats in this game, since they go down more often than they go up when leveling. Especially the Priests Piety and the Mages' IQ have a tendency of going down. I created a new Elf Mage in Wiz 1 and imported him. After leveling up to lvl 7 he had an IQ of 5 (five!). It's just sick...
Only stats of 16+ give you a bonus and I only have two characters with bonus Vitality (which governs chance of Resurrection) and two spell casters with bonus Agility (which is supposed to govern initiative, but I'm not convinced).

So I guess I'll have to use the dirtiest trick in the book, reserved only for really desperate time: use a DosBox version with Save States. More than two groups of Priests? Lol, reload. Oh noes, the bastards killed one of my guys after all! Lol, reload.

This game is badly balanced IMO. Beginning is very hard, although not quite as hard as MM1-2, and then it gets quite easy once you get 20+ HP for your front line guys. Even the last level is much easier than the last level in Wiz 1 (no level drainers, or else they are very rare), but running through that gauntlet of Priests of Fung is brutal. Reminds me a bit of Bard's Tale, which also was very hard in the beginning (especially if you didn't borrow that Fire Horn), then got quite easy for most of the game, and then becoming almost impossible on the last couple of levels, where pure luck would determine if you survived running the gauntlet to face Mangar.

 

[Invictus]

Well you did ask for it Octavious; some posters here warned you the leveling system was screwed up on the PC version, the PS2 remakes are not only nicer looking but are much more polished and forgiving
Oh and the whole "must representative" Wizardry I would say 7 hands down; a case could be made for 6 or even 5 but the series itself reached its peak from a gameplay and gameworld perspective (with all the core Wiz classes and abilities in place and an actual "overworld" instead of pure dungeon crawling, and the Bradley philosophical approach to storytelling reached its peak.
Not only is Wiz 7 one of my favorite games of all time but I daresay it is the finest blobber ever, and yes that counts Dungeon Master 2 and Might and Magic 3...those games were fun but for a pure thinking stategic gaming experience Wiz 7 is still unmatched

 

[Jaesun]

Can't you silence them?

 

[octavius]

Well you did ask for it Octavious; some posters here warned you the leveling system was screwed up on the PC version, the PS2 remakes are not only nicer looking but are much more polished and forgiving

In Wiz 1-2 the stats go more up than they go down, so you eventually get decent characters with 18 in their most important stats. Also - and this is quite crucial - you can start with 18 in key stats, while in Wiz 3 the starting stats are capped at 15, which don't give any bonuses.
One weird thing is that of my two victorious Samurais from Wiz 1-2, one has 18 in all the important stats (Str, Vit, Agi and Lck), and the other one (who started with 28 bonus points in Wiz 1) has 18 Str, but only 9-12 in the other stats.

Can't you silence them?

Yes, but only one group at a time, and I only have one Priest. And they get saving throws and often shake off the effect in the next round.

 

[Jaesun]

That's why I like to have 2 Valkyries in my party. So they can spam Silence (in Wiz6-8)

 

[octavius]

That's why I like to have 2 Valkyries in my party. So they can spam Silence (in Wiz6-8)

No Valkyries in Wiz 3. Also there are Good and Evil paths, and the Evil party (with no Lord as backup Silencer) is the one having problems.

 

[octavius]

Priests of NNNNGGG!!!!

 

[TigerKnee]

Eh, I guess your playthrough has made it so that I'm pretty happy with only playing Wiz 6-8...

or the Japanese ones.

 

[octavius]

Eh, I guess your playthrough has made it so that I'm pretty happy with only playing Wiz 6-8...

or the Japanese ones.

I must say I found the early Wizardries both better and easier than I had expected, so I'd defintely recommend them if you're craving for a turn based blobber and have already played Wiz 6-8 and all the Bard's Tale and M&M games.
The Nintendo versions of Wiz 1-3 look good (apparantly the japs can do decent artwork if they want) and the fix the bugs, but they also redesign some of the levels and screw up the sequence (1,3,2 instead of 1,2,3). The native Japanese Wizardries could probably be fun, if it wasn't for the anime artwork that I can't stand.

 

[Crooked Bee]

You should try The Dark Spire. It doesn't have any anime artwork, and is perfectly playable with Desmume.

Also yeah, I wouldn't replay the DOS Wiz1-3 anymore. That's why I went with the SNES version for my Wiz1 LP. The SNES version also supposedly toned down some of the more insane difficulty spikes like the aforementioned Priests of Fung (I say supposedly because I only played Wiz1 on SNES so far).

 

[octavius]

I wanted the authentic experience. But since the Ninetendo versions are more than just cosmetic changes I may well try them some time.

 

[octavius]

Heh, finally beat those Priests of Fung in Wiz 3, I had to beat eight groups of them, four before meeting some swarthy guy that sold me a crystal for 25,000 gold. Fortunately I had the funds. Unfortunately it was not the Crystal of Evil, but the Rod of Fire, and I could not go the same way out, but had to beat up four other groups of Priests. But I got lucky with the numbers and got through with only two party members dead.

So I still need to find the Crystal of Evil and some Water item, I guess, before I can face L'kbreth again. I guess I'll just have to check for secrets doors to the areas still unexplored, since the Light spell is not 100% in this game (it was in the two previous games).

This is definitely the most eventful and intricate of the three first Wizardry games! Wiz 2 was like an expansion pack for Medal of Honor in comparison.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[LeStryfe79]