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Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

gman42

Scholar
Joined
Sep 15, 2018
Messages
148
Note that it's nearly impossible to NOT be at least somewhat over-encumbered going through Bane - you have to carry around a lot of shit, armour is heavy, and there's a bug so that your carrying capacity is set based on your strength at the start of the game and it never rises.

Mostly due to one damn item, too...without the stupid rope it would be pretty manageable. As it stands, without patching that feature/bug, you'd probably have to have at least 4 characters with 16+ STR at creation to avoid having anyone encumbered by the endgame.
 
Joined
Dec 9, 2013
Messages
226
Location
Calgary
Started Wizardry VI last weekend, so far I find the changes to the Wizardry series most welcomed. Still figuring it all out, however, I am making lots of headway in the castle.

Wizardry VI is starting to become my favorite Wizardry so far.
 

Neerasrc

Learned
Joined
Jun 2, 2019
Messages
187
Location
Türkiye
PC version is deferred again.
News: https://gematsu.com/2019/08/wizardry-labyrinth-of-lost-souls-for-pc-delayed-to-early-2020

"Discussions with the licencor have concluded that this title cannot launch until early next year."
Following a delay to summer from its initially planned May 29 release date due to “an unforeseen issue involving IP licensing,” XSEED Games has delayed the PC version of Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls to early 2020.

“Unfortunately, due to the unforeseen IP licensing issue previously mentioned, Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls will not be able to launch on PC this year,” XSEED Games said in a statement. “Discussions with the licencor have concluded that this title cannot launch until early next year.”

The company continued, “We, too, are eager to get this game out, and appreciate our fans’ patience with this delay. We look forward to sharing more specifics as soon as we can.”

Steam page of the game
 

rohand

Cipher
Joined
Aug 20, 2014
Messages
592
Location
Planet Escape
Started Wizardry VI last weekend, so far I find the changes to the Wizardry series most welcomed. Still figuring it all out, however, I am making lots of headway in the castle.

Wizardry VI is starting to become my favorite Wizardry so far.

Taking a trilogy marathon on that right now, with a SAM, VAL, NIN, BAR, PRI, MAG group
 
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Sonic Titan

Educated
Joined
Oct 22, 2018
Messages
87
YouTube algorithm strikes again with a Wizardry 7 video on front page..guess I’ll have to dive back in after getting frustrated with dosbox keymapping issues.
 

deadmeme

Learned
Joined
Aug 12, 2019
Messages
152
Finished Bane of Cosmic Forge finally. Level design is really good, except for the mines.
Castle 7/10- Starts slowly
Mines 3/10- Terrible area, I hate backtracking there
Pyramid 8/10- Interesting enemies plus you are in a fucking pyramid :D
River Styx Onward 10/10- Godlike tier, cool map design, epic combat and epic loot :positive:.
 
Joined
Dec 9, 2013
Messages
226
Location
Calgary
Wizardry VI, you hate me right?

Troll Troll, is becoming maddening. 22 tries. I don't get how he can be so strong. I am going back and grinding some levels out for this idoit
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,786
Finished Bane of Cosmic Forge finally. Level design is really good, except for the mines.
Castle 7/10- Starts slowly
Mines 3/10- Terrible area, I hate backtracking there
Pyramid 8/10- Interesting enemies plus you are in a fucking pyramid :D
River Styx Onward 10/10- Godlike tier, cool map design, epic combat and epic loot :positive:.

Wot, mines are one of the best parts of the game
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I played Wizardry 8 for a bit (only the monastery levels and up to Level 9) with a full Faerie party:

3 Faerie Rogues: skilling Speed and Attack
3 Faerie Mages: skilling Speed and Intelligence

Result:
I wasn't happy with the Rogues. They were weak and couldn't use any weapons except daggers and small staves.

I was quite happy with the Mages. Especially because of skilling "Speed" (causing higher initiative). Because of that I could cast my spells before any enemy made a move. This was really new to me - always being the first in action - even the Mages. In most other playthroughs my characters acted "somewhere in between" or at "last". So this was a whole new experience. Due to that the Mages blasted through lots of enemies before they could even reach me (this also made the Rogues somewhat obsolete).

Minor lol-effect: I skilled all Mages likewise, and when spamming "Noxious Fumes" the enemies were not only nauseated but also fell unconscious, and were easy prey. Hilarious.
Minor meh-effect: I tried the same with spamming "Terror" and "Sonic Boom" because a sideeffect of these should also be unconsciousness, but it didn't work there. Weird. I remember, that when an enemy continuously casted Terror on my party, some of my party members fell unconscious. Doesn't seem to work well on enemies though.

Thoughts for next attempt:
Next time I would use Fighters instead of Rogues. And maybe 2 Fighters would be enough. 2 Fighters and 4 Mages. Or maybe 0 Fighters and 6 Mages? I could use "Summon Elementals" (spell available at level 11) instead of Fighters. Each fight I could summon elementals as melee fighters. Imagine that: summoning 6 Elementals!
Summoning Elementals was sometimes a problem in my previous playthroughs because my Mages didn't come first in action. So enemies walked towards me and there was no space left to summon Elementals anymore. When you skill "Speed" however this shouldn't be a problem, because your Mages cast first.
 
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Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
So I made some Faerie Fighters and found out that can't equip most swords, armor, shields. Only the most basic stuff. That's a bummer. I thought these things were mostly a class restriction, but it's a race restriction too. Mostly on Faeries though, because it's the only one being encircled in red in the DNA-section.

What's the logic behind that? Why can't they use a simple Shortsword and Longsword? According to the weapon data the weight of the swords is less than a Shillelah Staff (which they can equip), so the weight can't be a problem. Furthermore both are for 1-Handed use (same as the Staff), so grabbing these weapons with their hands can't be a problem either! So why can't they use these weapons? It makes no fucking sense! Same issue for a simple shield. Also less weight than a Shillelah Staff, but unusable. So you cannot even raise their armorclass via shield attributes.

Maybe there is some special and custom made equipment which works for them, but then the whole game becomes a hunt for this equipment. And which equipment would work anyways? I've no idea. Unfortunately JeffLudwig's website also doesn't show the race-restrictions of equipment (only class-restrictions) :(

It's always the same things I dislike in this game: the many items which are restricted in mysterious (and imo non-sensical) ways.
 
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Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
The issues with the equipment made me consider a full Faerie Mage party.
The plan was to skill SPE and INT first and then PIE and VIT. The stats for SPE and INT are so high that at Level 9 they could reach 100 already. They also have good Mental resistance out of the box (starting equipment gives +20), which should make a "Soul Shield" unnecessary (they don't have it in their spellbook). For Elemental resistance they got their "Elemental Shield" spell, for Ranged Weapon defense they got their "Missile Shield", and for Melee Weapon defense they could summon Elementals.

Result:
Despite my initial plan of a full Mage party I decided to go with 2 Faerie Fighters and only 4 Faerie Mages. The party was still decent. All the Mages could spam the same spell and blast through the enemies easily. And it was really satisfying always being able to make the first action in combat (because of the high SPE).
Mages have not much physical defense though, and that was the reason I made 2 Fighters in the frontrow. At level 11 I could summon Elementals as a sponge between the party and the enemies. The elementals are really cool, but also kinda slow in their attack and move around on their own. So only relying on Elementals was a bit unsafe. The 2 Faerie Fighters were a safe sponge though. Even though they couldn't equip most armor, weapons, shields, they had a huge amount of healthpoints (much more than my Mages). I equipped them with 2 basic spears. Later I gave them the Demon Sting Bow and a Musket (I was surprised that they could use these weapons). That said, the Fighters felt underused in this party because the Mages did the most work. I should have given them ranged weapons from the beginning, so they could always attack as well.
Bayjin was once again a tough location. There were some wizards in Bayjin which were almost immune to magic or cast "Eye for an Eye" which made casting spells utterly useless. They had like 200 HP and my Mages 35 HP (at Level 12 or so). Casted 1-2 spells and it all fell back to me killing my own Mages first. Then I summoned Elementals and let them attack, but there was another problem: Because the Mages couldn't fight these wizards in an open battle I had to hide behind a corner and attack them via an area spell first and at the same time summon Elementals. Then the Elementals attacked the enemy wizard, but after 2-3 rounds the combat suddenly stopped and the Elementals disappeared. And yet the enemy wizard was alive! I'm not sure why that happened, but I think it is because hiding behind a corner makes the game think you have retreated and stops the battle (even though the Elementals were still attacking). And that was really really annoying!!! If it weren't for that, Bayjin wouldn't have been much of a problem!!!
Then I thought that I could come out of the corner while the Elementals were attacking. But then the enemy Wizard ignored the Elementals (4 Elementals were surrounding him) and focused with spells on my Mages. Ouch...
Eventually I was kinda disappointed by the magical resistance of the Mages. Despite their huge bonus out of the box and Elemental Shied they felt kinda weak against magical attacks. I expected them to be almost immune to magic. But they weren't. It think the biggest problem wasn't even their magical resistances but their low healthpoints (about 35 HP). They were simply too low. I should have given them 17 points in VIT at the character creation and points at every Level-Up. Then they probably would have like 60 HP. Sounds not much more, but it would have made a huge difference! So next time VIT has priority and maybe SPE later.
Another thing I noticed was, that a Mage has too many Attack spells. He can use Iceball, Fireball, Noxious Fumes, Whipping Rocks, Magic Missiles. Dumb as I was I added them all. Don't do that. First of all they're all making similar amounts of damage, and second you cannot skill them all at the same time. So it's pointless. It's also a waste of the few points you can spend for acquiring spells (only 1 point per Level-Up). Mostly I ended up using Noxious Fumes and Fireball. Noxious Fumes is almost a Must-Have, because it works for almost every enemy and includes possible sideeffects like unconsciousness. Fireball doesn't work underwater, but otherwise feels stronger than Iceball. Whipping Rocks and Magic Missiles always felt crappier to me. One reason for that is that they use a "Cone Shape" (while Fireball uses "Radius"). And this cone shape is shit, because you often miss some enemies. For example if you are surrounded by enemies you can't target all enemies at once with this spell. With Fireball however you just put the Fireball directly on your own position, and all enemies around you are targeted and blasted away. And that happens quite often. The second reason is, that Cone Spells have significantly less range than Fireball. Often you have to make a Party Move to get into enemy range, and that makes combat very tedious. While the Fireball can be cast in a distance where an enemy cannot even range attack you.
Eventually the question is how many area attack spells should you really add to your character? I'd say 2 area attack spells are enough for the first half of the game. No more. Instead add more (even crappy) spells from the same realm so you get more spellpoints in this realm and can recast the spell more often. At Level 14 Fireball and Noxious Fumes were still my main attack spells.
I stopped this playthrough though because of wrong decisions (wrong spells and low vitality). I'm not sure if it's worth to take the run again, because there are other things that can be devastating for the party. For example cloud spells like "Toxic Cloud" became a real threat to my Mages. I wished I had this "Purify Air" spell then. Also I wished I had the "Heal All" spell and maybe "Soul Shield". These are the only ones I missed out of the box though.

I thought about making a Bishop party:
One advantage of the Bishop is, that he can use the protective spells I mentioned above. Another advantage of the Bishop is that he gets slightly more healthpoints than a Mage. So I experimentally made a Bishop party. In this case I actually made a full Bishop party, so 6 Bishops.
At Level 5 I noticed that Bishops didn't get the Fireball spell in comparison to my Mages. Why was that again? It was because my Bishops had not reached the requirements for the Fireball spell (even though they were the same Level as the Mages). But the available spells are not based on the character Level but on the character's magical skills. Fireball is Spell Level 3 and according to http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/recovered/wolfie/perko.html has the following requirements: the Wizardry Skill + 10% of Fire Skill must have 30 points. This means it needs either 30 points in Wizardry and 0 points in Fire Skill, or like 28 points in Wizardry and 20-29 points in Fire Skill (where 10% is 2 points), making a total of 30 points. I was very close to it, but not quite. The Mage had more points in Wizardry and magic skills from the beginning, so he got it earlier. I have totally forgotten about this.
I discontinued this party though because I skilled wrongly again. I went with "Cone Shape" spells only and was really annoyed by their limitations. Another reason was that I missed tanks or sponges. It often got annoying without them. Another reason was that the initiative (SPE) was much lower than that of Mages, so my actions came later in combat. That didn't feel so enjoyable anymore. Also their stats max out much later, for example 4-7 levels later for INT and SPE in comparison to Mages. That is a lot. Though SPE isn't that important for Bishops. It's more important for Mages, because they cannot heal themselves and should kill enemy wizards before taking too much damage. Another reason was that getting spells from different spellbooks took longer than expected. This was because I had to put points into both the "Divinity spellbook" and the "Wizardry spellbook". I also found it difficult train the Divinity spellbook at the beginning, which made casting protective spells with higher spellpower difficult. Another issue was, that I almost ran out of points for acquiring new spells. Usually you add some useless spells like "Light" to get more spellpoints for Fire Magic, but when you do this with 2 spellbooks you can easily get into a deficit of points. So you have to be very careful. Bishops are still worth a consideration, but everything takes longer and needs more planning.

I also thought about making a Samurai party, but going full on Wizard:
A big advantage of the Samurais are, that they get a lot of healthpoints. Like an estimated 100 healthpoints or so at Level 12. So they can endure magical attacks much longer. But there are lots of disadvantages to them:
- Their Wizardry skills starts only at reaching Level 5 (so 4 Levels later than Mages)
- They start with a Wizardry skill of 5 and a Fire Skill of 0 and 9 points to distribute (while a Mage starts with 6-8 points in every magic skill and 15 points to distribute)
- They only get 1 spell to start with (while a Mage can start with 2 spells), and therefore also have less spellpoints
With these disadvantages it will take the Samurai much longer to get the Fireball spell. With every Level-Up only giving 3 points to each skill and focusing on magic alone, they still need like 7 Level-Ups to get the required number of points. Maybe they'll get the Fireball at Level 12. But probably later. Doesn't sound very compelling tbh.
Another issue is, that when you go full Wizard, the melee combat skills become useless. One reason for that is that you have to spend all skillpoints into magical skills. There is nothing left for melee combat skills. And as a wizard you have to do magical attack most of the time. Because of that your melee attack won't get trained. And because of that you won't be a good fighter. All that remains from going this hybrid approach are the higher healthpoints. I'm not sure it's worth all these things just for higher healthpoints.

#######################################################################

For the record... I skilled now VIT every Level-up:
Faerie Mage: 6 Healthpoints at Level 1, 35 Healthpoints at Level 9, 44 Healthpoints at Level 11
Faerie Bishop: 7 Healthpoints at level 1, 44 Healthpoints at Level 9 -> The Healthpoints of the Bishop are significantly higher, but the increase is similar. He'll probably reach 100 Healthpoints at Level 20 while the Mage will probably reach 80. The Mage has still significantly more Healthpoints than in my previous party, where it was like 35 Healthpoints at Level 12.

For the record... I skilled SPE for higher Initiative:
Faerie Mage: Speed 82 -> Initiative 20
Faerie Bishop: Speed 72 -> Initiative 20 -> Strangely enough the Initiative of the Bishop is the same even with 10 points lower. Technically this makes the Bishop a faster wizard if he had the same amount of points. He can't spend that much points at the same time though. Eventually the Mage will reach SnakeSpeed 4 Levels earlier.

For the record... The Mage's biggest advantage is that he can max out some skills earlier and a minor magical resistance bonus (+5 in all realms). Otherwise the Bishop is on a par with a Mage. There is also the saying that the Mage can train his spells more efficiently, but that's relative. While the Bishop requires more Exp for a Level-up, he also has to do more combats. And because of these more combats he automatically trains his spells more often and gets better. So eventually he could cast his spells at the same powerlevel as a Mage at the same Level. This however doesn't work well when the party contains Mages and Bishops. That is because the Mages often kill the enemies before the Bishops cast their spells, and therefore snatch the required training away. Therefore a party with 2 Fighters, 2 Mages, 2 Bishops is bad. A party with 2 Fighters and 4 Bishops is more efficient to train.

For the record... I'm still a bit divided in this. Maybe 2 Mages and 2 Bishops are still viable, but the Bishops should focus on Healing spells. They could use the Divinity and Psionic spellbook and then use Healing All, Stamina All, Soul Shield, and that psionic "Might to Magic" spell which gives spellpoints back. Could be very helpful, if you have no Magic Nectar potion. Theoretically the magical damage output would be less with only 2 Mages (compared to 4 Mages), but my recent party has shown, that this theory was flawed anyways: many combats required me to have 1-2 Mages regularly use spells like "Web" to temporarily disable enemies. So even with 4 Mages only 2-3 were actively attacking. And then there was the huge problem that my Mages had to use Health potions (even though I gave them more VIT points) or Stamina potions. And in these combat rounds they couldn't attack either. So eventually that 4 Mage party may even produce less damage over time than 2 Mages which are constantly buffed by 2 Bishops, and don't have to care about these things.

For the record... Don't forget that in Trynton is the fountain of "Memory", which gives a permanent +5 INT bonus.

For the record... Faeries don't always get the same starter equipment as other races. For example they don't get Bows and Arrows as Rangers, or Bishop's hats as Bishops. They still get Omniguns as Gadgeteers, but generally their "starter equipment is unusual" (which is mentioned in their racial features, but it can still be disappointing).

For the record... I tried to play a badass party: killing everyone, including NPCs, merchants, not buying anything at all, and no alliances at all. It was kinda fun to clear Arnika and the Umpani Base, but when I reached the merchant in the Rapax Castle I had to question this way of playing.
The main reason is, that some items are only available through merchants (custom weapons), or much easier to obtain by buying than getting them in a monster drop or chest drop (which are all kinda random). One example for that are various strong Bows, which can even be used by Faeries. Much easier to buy than to get dropped. This also applies to Defense Bracers, Necklaces and Rings with magical protection. Killing the merchants therefore means a delay in getting these items or not getting them at all. That's tough and can be devastating for the party. Devastating it becomes then, when you are trying to go with a party that relies mainly on its high default magical resistance (like Faeries) and think you could add the additional resistances only via magical jewellery. And in this case you are totally dependent on having this jewellery because the default magical resistance is simply not enough. Faerie Mages have a 45-50 magical resistance out of the box, but this isn't enough against Deathwish spells etc. You need a resistance of 80 or so. This playstyle is still viable, but only if you are not dependent on these items. And that means you need to have someone who can cast the "Soul Shield" spell - which means you should have a Priest in your party (my party didn't have one). The case isn't so bad with weapons though, because there are still some good weapons around as drops.
Another reason is, that from Level 9 onwards levelling-up becomes a slog. That is because with a badass party you can't take any quests. You only gain Exp by grinding monsters. And that takes much longer.

For the record... Summoning 4 Elementals are cool, but they often stand in your way. Once you have them summoned in front of you, your archers can't shoot anymore, and you can't select an enemy with single target attack spells anymore. Also the Elementals seem to act as the last ones in the whole combat round, which makes the combat very slow. And when they move they sometimes open up space for enemies to slip by and attack you. And the enemies will always try to slip by the Elementals and attack your party. Always! The Elementals especially became a problem for me when I had to fight against a group of Rapax Fighters and Wizards. The Elementals blocked the way so much, that I couldn't even target the Rapax Wizard with my own Mages anymore. While the Rapax Wizard spammed long range spell after long range spell (infinite times), my own long range spells were to weak to kill him (he had like 400 healthpoints), even though I tried to spam spells with my 4 Mages as well. I couldn't even "Web" him, because the distance was too far, and my own Elementals blocked me from getting closer! That said, Elementals are still useful, but I think you should add no more than 2 Elementals, otherwise you're hindering yourself.

For the record... Concentrating on Fireball and Noxious Fumes did not work so good anymore in the Rapax region. Noxious Fumes were okay, but Fireball didn't make much damage against Rapax. Iceball would probably have been better. Is Firemagic generally worse than Watermagic? Firemagic also can't be used underwater, which practically makes Firemagic unusable(!) in 2 whole regions! Firemagic may still have an advantage over Watermagic against the Rhynjin, but the question is how much difference?

For the record... It's possible to create wizards, who only have spells in 1 Magic Realm. For example a Wizard, who only has Waterspells and nothing else. The idea of that is to gain the maximum amount of spellpoints possible in that Magic Realm and therefore being able to spam the same spell more often. So I made a "Super-Water-Bishop" who concentrated on Watermagic spells only. Each Level-Up I spent 3 points on each "Wizardry", "Divinity", "Alchemy" (and "Watermagic" I trained by practice). At Level 8 he had a total of 9 Waterspells and 90 spellpoints in Watermagic.
Then I made a "Water-Fire-Air Mage" who concentrated on Firemagic, Watermagic, Airmagic. Each Level-Up I spent 3 points on "Wizardry" and 2 points on each "Firemagic", "Watermagic, "Airmagic". At Level 8 he also had a total of 9 spells (3 spells per Realm) and an average of 45 spellpoints in each Magic Realm.
In the end the Water-Bishop had approximately the double amount of spellpoints than the Mage in Watermagic (only). However the total amount of spellpoints in all Magic Realms together was significantly less than the Mage (90 spellpoints vs approximately 135 spellpoints). I would have liked if the Water-Bishop had 135 spellpoints in Watermagic, but this wasn't the case. Obviously the amount of spells in a Magic Realm didn't matter that much in spellpoint gain. The Water-Bishop had 9 spells in Watermagic while the Mage had only 3 spells in Watermagic. If we calculate the spellpoint gain per spell it's 10 spellpoints/spell for the Bishop and 15 spellpoints/spell for the Mage. So the spellpoint gain is much worse for the Bishop. If they both had the same amounts of spells, the Mage would have 50% more spellpoints. A Mage however can only add 6 Waterspells throughout the whole game, while a pure Water-Bishop can add all 19 spells. But then again 3x the amount of spells doesn't make it 3x the amount of spellpoints. Instead it's only 2x the amount of spellpoints.
Note however that these values are by no means fixed like that in the game. These values change over time, and I don't know the exact formula. It doesn't make sense to dive deeper into this matter without knowing the formula, but some things clearly stand out: First, a Mage clearly gains more spellpoints/spell. Second, a Bishop concentrating on 1 Magic Realm only will make less overall damage than a Mage concentrating on 3 Magic Realms, i.e. a Water-Bishop can cast 4x Iceball, while the Mage can cast 2x Iceball and 2x Fireball and 2x Noxious Fumes (which is 50% more damage overall), and therefore is much more versatile against different types of enemies. The idea of a "Super-Water-Bishop" is still interesting, because it feels good if you can recast the same spells more often. But it's also limiting. A "Super-Fire-Bishop" would be a bad idea though, because he would have nothing to do in 2 regions of the game.

For the record... It is more important for a Wizard to spend skillpoints on the Magic Spellbook (Wizardry, Divinity, Alchemy, Psionics) than on the Magic Realms (Firemagic, Watermagic, Airmagic, Earthmagic, Mentalmagic, Divinemagic). Spending skillpoints on the Spellbook gives you access to new spells, while the Magic Realms can simply be improved by casting the spells. I didn't think about that so much when using a Mage, Priest, Psionic, Alchemist, but it became really obvious when using a Bishop. If you don't do that as a Bishop, you'll get new spells much later than expected!

For the record... I've read a note that the spell "Holy Water" allegedly is the best way to fight "Eye for an Eye", because it doesn't damage yourself. I'll have to check that. Especially later in the game Eye for an Eye is often cast by (demonlike) enemies, therefore it should indeed work.

For the record... Enemy spells reminded me how devastating the lack of Priests is. When enemies cast area spells, all my Mages took damage at the same time. Because of that all of them needed to take Health Potions at the same time. And because of that they couldn't cast anything. The combat round was kinda lost. With an additional Priest the Mages would not have to care about that. The Priest could simply cast "Heal All", and the Mages can continue to spam spells. In one battle my Mages even went out of Stamina, so I additionally had to use Stamina potions, which really dragged on. In that case a Priest could simply cast "Stamina All" as well. I forgot how important these things are. I also thought that I could kill enemy wizards faster than they become lethal to my own Mages (after all I had 4 offensive Mages), but these enemies have so much healthpoints and resistances, that it's simply not possible! And when the enemy wizards start to spam spells, I again began to notice the lack of a Healer. It seems sooner or later I'll have to go back to a "classic party setup".

For the record... I checked JeffLudwig's website for weapons and planned to get some of these weapons in the game. The thing however is, that I didn't plan a full walkthrough - and yet assumed I would automatically stumble on them. That didn't work out. I hardly found any of the weapons I wanted, and ran around with shit weapons. So this is a reminder not to start the game like that. If you want a "quick" playthrough, and with specific weapons in mind, you have to know where to find them. This website shows where they are http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/recovered/flamestryke/wizardry8/flamestrykes_w8.html Navigate to Item Index->Individual Item Index->Weapons. I also noticed, that this website also shows if a weapon is restricted by a race (Jeff's website only shows if a weapon is restricted by a class). So you can find out in advance, if your desired weapon can be used by a Faerie or not. Both websites are very helpful and should be used in combination.

For the record... I considered to make 2 Faerie Rangers in the frontrow instead of 2 Faerie Fighters. I thought that when I summon Elementals every battle, I would mostly use ranged attack for my tanks. As the gameplay showed however, I often couldn't use ranged attack because the Elementals blocked the view. So I would not have gained much from making Rangers. Therefore it was no mistake to go for Fighters and have more hitpoints instead. There was still a lot of melee attacks happening. I skilled the Fighters in melee attacks (staves and dual) and ranged attacks (bows), so they were fit for any situation. One would think that skilling 2 attack types is too much, but it was totally fine. There were so many battles, that both were constantly used and trained. In fact now I'm convinced that going for 1 weapon attack only (like a fighter who only uses melee attack and a ranger who only uses ranged attack) is a total waste of opportunity! You have to skill both attacks for them! A Ranger who only stays in the backrow as a ranged support is not as good as having him in the frontrow and help as an additional sponge and in melee combat.
That said, I'm not convinced that Rangers make sense at all. For example I made an experimental party with a Ranger and tried to skill Senses (SEN) instead of Dexterity (DEX) or Strength (STR), with the goal of achieving Eagle Eye specialisation later. But SEN almost gives you nothing. No ToHit and no ToDamage ability. It was much worse than DEX or STR. Quite offputting to put points into a skill that holds you back. And that specialisation may not be worth in comparison. The only thing that SEN clearly did, was increasing the initiative. But in my party that wasn't important, as I only wanted my 4 Mages to have high initiative, and the Fighters were mostly there "to clean up the remains". So it was okay when they came later in combat. But even when skilling DEX and STR for the Ranger, he lacked behind the Fighter approximately 4 levels in all important attributes (even ranged damage). So again it didn't make sense to make Rangers at all. I forgot though, that Rangers have a chance for Ranged Criticals = instakills. So this may be an argument for having Rangers. Though criticals do not happen as often as one might hope for.

For the record... I experimented with a party, where I totally wanted to separate defensive and offensive wizards. The defensive wizards should only have healing, buff, utility spells (Heal, Heal All, Rest, Rest All, Element Shield, Soul Shield, Knock-Knock, Web, Magic Screen, Purify Air, Missile Shield, Might to Magic, Summon Elementals etc.), while the offensive wizards should only have direct damage spells (Fireball, Iceball, Noxious Fumes, etc.). For the defensive wizards I made Bishops, for the offensive wizards I made Mages. I created 2 identical Bishops and 2 identical Mages. Aside from that I also made 2 Fighters on the front.
In the end the Bishops had to skill 3 Spellbooks (Psionics, Divinity, Wizardry), because some special spells were not available in the Divinity spellbook. Additionally the Bishops required training in 5 (out of 6) Magic Realms. I also had to use spells like "Mindstab" otherwise the Psionics spellbook wouldn't increase enough to get the "Might to Magic" spell. And eventually it was too much for the Bishops. It was too much to skill, too much to train, too much switching around between the spells. Their magic skills barely increased in normal combat and their whole development was slow. In comparison to them the Mages skyrocketed. They had almost the double amount of points in their magic skills. The only nice thing with the Bishops was, that because they used spells like Web and Missile Shield, the Mages didn't have to cast them, and therefore could fully concentrate on direct damage spells. But this didn't make up for the tedious handling of the Bishops.
I therefore tend to agree what has often been repeated by others: "The simple classes are the best". Which means, that a pure Psionic and Priest (who have all bonuses) is better than a Bishop. Therefore I should also change my party setup. One possible party setup could be 2 Priests (front), 2 Mages, 2 Psionics. Another party setup could be 3 Fighters, 1 Priest, 1 Mage, 1 Psionic. Since my 2 offensive Mages did not deal as much damage as I hoped for in the Rapax region (because the Rapax simply have too many hitpoints), the "double team" approach isn't that convincing anymore though.

For the record... I tried the following party: 3 Gadgeteers focusing on their Omniguns only (thinking of a gun-party) and 3 highly specialised Bishops as described some paragraphs above (1 focusing on Divinemagic only, 1 on Watermagic only, 1 on Airmagic only). The Bishops did ok, the Gadgeteers only mediocre. The Gadgeteers had to protect the Bishops, so they were in the front row. They were quite weak however. Only 60 healthpoints at Level 9, even though I always put points in VIT. They couldn't endure more than 3 hits of a Rapax. Very glassy. The party was missing real Tanks. This was a big problem.

For the record... Once again I was annoyed by the buff-casting issue: there are important buffs like Shadowhound, Missile Shield, Magic Screen, Armorplate, Enchanted Blade etc, which you should cast outside of combat. Casting these spells however cost a lot of mana and therefore immediately require you to camp again. By camping again however you also reduce their duration again, and the buff often expires while or soon after camping. This is one of the most annoying things in the game. If you however don't camp afterwards, you're missing essential spellpoints for combat. Some people deal with this problem by constantly teleporting back and forth to the magic fountain in Trynton to replenish their spellpoints, but it's also a hack. It requires 2 wizards to be bound to the Trynton fountain (one wizard must have the teleport target always at the fountain, the other must put the teleport target at the location where he's standing right now). Sure it's a way to play, but it also blocks using the teleport spell anywhere else.
It's because of that, I thought of a pure Buff-Bishop. A Bishop who casts only these buffs, so other wizards don't have to cast them. After casting these buffs no camping would be required and the party could simply continue to walk around. This however is easier said than done, because the buffs are all spread among different Spellbooks and Magic Realms. So you have to develop all these things for the Bishop.

For the record... Even though wizards have plenty of spells in their inventory, you mostly only use 1-3 spells during combat. Anything more and it becomes tedious to control. Even using more than 1 spell can become tedious. For example: first you have to cast "Paralyze" to disable an enemy and then you have to cast "Frost" to attack him. But what happens if your "Paralyze" fails? Then you want to cast "Paralyze" again. It's an erratic back and forth switching, which soon becomes annoying. Then you realize it would be better to have to have these spells cast separately by different wizards: 1 wizard who permanently casts "Paralyze", and another who permanently casts "Frost". You want your wizards always do the same thing. This basically ends up in using the pre-configured "Priest", "Mage" classes. I tried to do it likewise with various Bishop builds (but more appropriate to my requirements), but unfortunately it always ended up being more complicated.
The tediousness in casting spells also applies to specialized classes: For example a Mage has 5 area attack spells at Level 10, and it becomes very annoying to switch between them. Again you want to use only 1-2 area attack spells instead of switching around. This however also means that you have to focus on 1-2 Magic Realms only. Is this viable? I'm not sure. Once the spellpoints of the specific Magic Realm are depleted, the Mage has nothing to do anymore. He should have as much as possible spellpoints in that Realm. IIRC spellpoints in a Magic Realm also increase by use. This means when you often use spells of a specific Realm, the spellpoints in that Realm will increase. So maybe it's possible to focus only on 1-2 Realms and get a good number of spellpoints over time. If not - maybe it's worth to consider skilling 1 weapon for the Mage, instead of multiple Magic Realms. So when the spellpoints are depleted he could still support the Tanks with extended weapons.
Btw. the spell "Magic Missiles" (even though I don't like the Cone Shape), is actually quite strong against Rapax. And I really like the splittering sound of it.

For the record... To be honest, I'm starting to dislike the Magic System. It's overly and unnecessarily complicated, and often feels random. Why for example does "Cure Poison" belong to the Air Realm and not the Water Realm? Why does the Wizardry Spellbook not contain "Magic Screen"? Why does the Divinity Spellbook not contain "Missile Shield"? Why does the Divinity Spellbook contain "Paralyze" but not "Paralyze All"? Why does it contain "Lifesteal" but not "Might to Magic"? Why are there 3 different spells for magic protection? Why are the magic protection spells separated in their types, when "Missile Shield" is not separated between different types of missiles? Why is "Magic Screen" an out-of-combat spell, but ElementalShield and SoulShield not? And these are just some examples. It often feels like these things are randomly mixed to make it more complicated, but not more meaningful. And this irks me. You'll especially notice these issues when you try to make a Bishop after your likeness, or choose a Wizard based on spells which are really necessary in the game. Suddenly you find out how messed up the game is.
But that's not all. The whole Spellbook thing starts to make less sense. The only thing that makes sense is, that the Mage, Priest, Psionic, Alchemist are pre-configured wizards with pre-configured spells (and therefore a slight bonus). But then look at the Bishop. Why is the Bishop dependent on the Spellbooks of those 4 wizards? He shouldn't be dependent on those 4 books, but be able to choose spells from a "Universal Spellbook" containing all spells. But instead he's utterly forced to use the preconfigured Spellbooks, their limitations and randomness, has to waste points into them, and deal with complications like "different Spellbook progression". And that's utter nonsense! That's exactly why he's a pain in the ass to develop. Even having to put points into the Spellbook is actually nonsense. Just give the specialized wizards a slight bonus in strength for their pre-configured spells, and the Bishop no bonus. Same result. Less complicated.

For the record... How the game really restricts you on creating parties: "Missile Shield" and some additional magic protection spell (Elemental Shield+Soulshield or at least Magic Screen) are essential in the game. This already forces you to have 2 Wizards in your party: 1 Priest, and 1 Mage. So 2 party slots are taken. Then you need at least 1 good tank (Fighter). So 3 slots are taken. Then you have to keep in mind that you need someone to open chests, so either a Gadgeteer or a Rogue. So 4 slots are taken. Now you only have 2 slots left for free character choices. But even that's not true, because you need at least a second tank, otherwise enemies will destroy you. So you add another Fighter or Hybrid. Now you only have 1 slot left for free choice. And that's it. That's very limiting to say the least. What I'm trying to say is, that the game always enforces the same party. There is not much room to the left or right to deviate. And this significantly impacts the replayability. There's no replayability left when your party is always the same. When you play the game for the very first time, you won't notice this and are probably fine with it. But when you try to replay it with a different party, you'll soon realize how ridiculous it is. You'd think there are endless possibilities in creating parties, but considering all the restrictions of the game you're forced to create the same party all over again. If you deviate from it, like wanting 4 Fighters in the party, or 3 Mages, or no Mage at all (considering how Firespells become unusable), you're missing essential buffs and skills, which will make your walkthrough horrible or impossible. All these restrictions are mostly caused by the overly artificial complexity of the game. This artificial complexity really stands in the way of itself when it comes to replayability. And this is a bad design decision for a game that implies high replayability through its many classes & races. They could have solved these issues with either less artificial complexity or allowing you to build a party of 8-10 characters from the get-go.

For the record... I came to the conclusion, that the Magic System, the Item System and the Weapon System (which I complained about in many earlier posts) are all unnecessarily complicated, restrictive and nonsensical. There is too much artificial complexity which stands in the way of itself. These things really take the joy out of the game (which I realized especially when trying to replay the game).
I have to say however, when it comes to replayability, most games disappoint and you'll really notice their flaws. But if there's no decent competitor, you somehow have to deal with these flaws. The best way to deal with the issue of "always having to build the same party" (which is maybe the most prominent one) is probably to use RPCs (recruitable player characters). RPCs mostly seem a burden, because they don't want to follow you everywhere, but some of them have special skills (like lockpicking). If you add these RPCs to your party, you don't need to create characters with these skills in your "core party". It allows more freedom in creating different parties. You can even change their classes (if you have the required amount of stat points) to adapt them more to your preferred party setup. It is also possible to get the RPCs follow you everywhere if you make them unconscious before moving to the next area (i.e. by running around until they fall unconscious, and put something heavy in their inventory so they run out of stamina faster). Unfortunately when they are forced into these ares, they also get a debuff of -20 in all stats, which is quite hefty! But that compromise may be worth if you can have them as permanent party members. I'd say that's the best way to go for.

For the record... If you have Vi in your party and go to the final battle with the Dark Savant, Vi automatically leaves your party and fights against him standing outside. This not only messes up your party formation but also seems unthankful after all the time you spent levelling her. So maybe another NPC is better for a "permanent" NPC party member.

#######################################################################

I tried to simplify using items, weapons and armor in the CosmicForge editor. That worked quite well, as the editor allows to make any item equippable by any class and race, and also usable as a dual weapon. I recommend to do that, because otherwise the overly unnecessary restrictions become annoying.

I also tried to simplify spellcasting in the CosmicForge editor. My goal was to convert all Cone- and Enemygroup-Spells into Radius-Spells, so there would only be Singletarget- and Radius-Spells. Technically it's possible to do that, but afterwards their effects are kinda messed up (e.g. halfway in the floor). It's very confusing and complicated to modify an existing effect or create a replacement effect in the clunky and limited UI. Besides removing Cone-Spells causes limitations in some cases, e.g. Radius-Spells can't target elevated placed (like positions ontop of Umpani towers or Rapax on the elevated wall on the Rapax Courtyard). The easiest thing would probably be to only change minor attributes of a spell or to assign a spell to another spellbook.

The Cosmic Forge editor also allows to change the view distance in the levels. I upped it to 1000 but it was way too much. It caused heavy framedrops and stuttering. Even reducing the value to 250 caused some slowdowns. I have to put it back to the default or at most use double values, but no more. Values of about 180 yielded better results. I have no dedicated GPU though, so maybe it works better for others. For the brief time I used the very high view distance, it was cool. Especially when you look down the valley in the Mountain Wilderness and see enemies from the far distance. An impression similar to that Loading Screen.
 
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theSavant

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Guide to use "Auto-advance to next character", Re-cast last spell, Windowed Mode (Wizardry 8)

In combat it's often required to re-apply the last action (especially re-casting the last spell). Re-applying the last action however, can become very tedious if you have many wizards in your party. So I looked into various methods to speed up applying actions, especially into the feature "Auto-advance to next character". The idea of this feature is, that when you apply an action to a character the game automatically advances to your next character, so you can quickly apply the next action. This should be very useful to speed up applying actions. This feature however often seems buggy. But it's not. It's just a bit complicated to figure out because of its restrictions. But once you know its restrictions, you can work with it and it really improves the quality of life in combat. I'll explain this feature by example.


First of all I enabled the automatic cycle in "Options" -> "General"->"Auto-advance to next character".
Then I used two different methods to re-apply actions on a party with 6 Wizards:
METHOD 1) Pressing "L", which re-applies the "Last Action" (in this case the Last Spell).
METHOD 2) Pressing "M", which brings up the spell menu everytime.


The first combat round is the same for both methods. You have to manually apply the spells for every character.


Second combat round (METHOD 1):
Press "L" and click an enemy -> enemy is targeted with the Last Spell [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "L" and click an enemy -> enemy is targeted with the Last Spell [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "L" and click an enemy -> enemy is targeted with the Last Spell [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "L" and click an enemy -> enemy is targeted with the Last Spell [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "L" and click an enemy -> enemy is targeted with the Last Spell [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "L" and click an enemy -> enemy is targeted with the Last Spell [Game STOPS advancing to next character, doesn‘t loop]

- Note that when you don‘t click an enemy after pressing "L", the cycle gets stuck.
- Note that once a character is out of spellpoints for the specific "Last Spell", the cycle gets stuck. Then you have to press "M" and choose another spell. Then the cycle continues to the next character as usual.


Second combat round (METHOD 2):
Press "M" and click spell strength -> game automatically targets an enemy [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "M" and click spell strength -> game automatically targets an enemy [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "M" and click spell strength -> game automatically targets an enemy [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "M" and click spell strength -> game automatically targets an enemy [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "M" and click spell strength -> game automatically targets an enemy [Game advances to next character in your party]
Press "M" and click spell strength -> game automatically targets an enemy [Game STOPS advancing to next character, doesn‘t loop]

- Note that the amount of mouseclicking with "M" is the same as with "L". That is because with "L" you have to manually target an enemy for every character otherwise the cycle gets stuck, while with "M" the game automatically targets an enemy for you. Also with "M" you have more control because you always see the spell strength first. Using "M" may be the better choice on the long run.


Re-applying actions was very fast because of the automatic cycle!


The automatic cycle however often gets stuck, which makes it seem buggy. But it's not. There are 3 cases where it gets stuck:
- If a Wizard is out of spellpoints for a specific spell or completely out of spellpoints, the cycle gets stuck.
- If a Wizard comes into Melee range of an enemy, the cycle gets stuck.
- If you have a Mixed Party (Fighters and Wizards) and the next "automatically selected character" is a Fighter, the cycle gets stuck.


Using the automatic cycle in a "Full Wizard Party":
The main rule to follow is, that your Wizards should not get into the Melee range of enemies. Kill the enemies before or summon Elementals as a sponge.


Using the automatic cycle in a "Mixed Party" (Fighters and Wizards):
There are three rules to follow.

Rule#1: "Wizards should not get into the Melee range of enemies"

Just use a setup where Fighters are in the frontrow and Wizards in the backrow:
-Frontrow- Fighter (char#1), Fighter (char#2)
-Middlerow- Wizard (char#3), Wizard (char#4)
-Backrow- Wizard (char#5), Wizard (char#6)

The Fighters in the frontrow hinder the Wizards from getting into the Melee range of enemies (as long as enemies only attack from the frontside). Therefore the automatic cycle works for the 4 Wizards. A mixed party like this is actually safer than a full Wizard party for the automatic cycle, because the Wizards rarely ever come into the Melee range of enemies.

Rule#2: "Every combat round you have to start the cycle at the first Wizard's position"

In the example above with the 4 Wizards you have to press keyboard button [3] first to make the cycle start at char#3, and then the automatic cycle continues from there. You have to do this every combat round. To speed up the process you can do the following: In Options->Keyboard->configure the "Select PC 3" with the button "N" (just use a button close to "M" or "L" on the keyboard). Then applying commands looks like this: "N"-> "M"->"M"->"M"->"M". Despite the additional button it's still very fast. Much faster than manually selecting the characters.

Rule#3: "Add your characters to the party screen according to the cycle's path"

The cycle's path always goes like this:
-> Top Left -> Top Right ->
-> Middle Left -> Middle Right ->
-> Bottom Left -> Bottom Right ->

Therefore you also have to add your characters to the party screen according to the cycle's path. Example:
[Fighter on the left side of screen][Fighter on the right side of screen]
[Fighter on the left side of screen][Wizard on the right side of screen]
[Wizard on the left side of screen][Wizard on the right side of screen]

The Wizards should always be one after the other according to the cycle's path and preferably on the last couple of slots. While the position in the party screen has nothing to do with the real tactical positions, it matters for the cycle. If you have Fighters somewhere in between, the cycle gets stuck everytime at a Fighter's position.



Further notes:
- The cycle does not continue on Fighters by applying commands like Attack, Defend, Equip, Protect, Use.
- The cycle does not continue on Fighters by using "L" (for Last Action).

- The cycle only continues by applying Spell commands.

It would be nice if we had an option to cycle through all characters manually. But the only way to cycle through all the characters is this:
In the UI there are 2 small Arrow-Buttons on the bottom panel which allow you to select the [Previous Character] and [Next Character]. They allow you to cycle through your characters manually. Now you would think this solves all problems but it doesn't. These Arrow-Buttons can only be clicked with the mouse and there is no keyboard command for them. And clicking these little buttons is often more tedious than clicking the character portraits.



Sidenote about "Windowed Mode": There are 2 ways to activate windowed mode. Go to the game folder and click on 3DSetup.exe:
- If you use the "Glide2x" you can activate windowed mode ingame (but not in the main menu) via [Alt]+[Enter]. However this causes a mouse bug, where your mouse is stuck on the lower right corner of the window, which makes the game unplayable. If there is a way to fix this, please tell me...
- If you use "DirectX7" you can activate windowed mode ingame (but not in the main menu) via [Ctrl]+[F12]. The window is very small. You can however resize it manually by pulling the borders of the window (like you resize any other window). Only disadvantage is, that you have to resize the window every time again you start the game. It doesn‘t have the mouse bug though.
 
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Grauken

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may be of interest to some of you

The not-so-basic mechanics of Wizardry

The not-so-basic mechanics of Wizardry

Around 2012-2014, Thomas William Ewers reverse-engineered the Wizardry code and published compilable Pascal source to Asimov, which was invaluable for understanding not just the mechanics of Wizardry, but also for decrypting the data behind monsters, characters, items, weapons, treasures, and furthermore, understanding what all of those stats actually do.

Parsing the source code still took a lot of effort to gain the understanding that I have, and quite a bit may still escape me. Variable and function names are Ewers’ invention, are terse, and don’t always best reflect what the variable or function does. A lot of logic behaves very strangely by modern standards, with single variables that serve multiple purposes, spaghetti code, and data which gets copied from variable to variable and back. It’s often hard to tell what a thing is supposed to be doing at any given moment. There are some stats and intricacies that are barely used or even not used at all, including logic for encounters that don’t exist in Wiz1, and some very complicated logic in the treasure system that seems to never be invoked by any of the treasures in the game. I’ve glossed over such things, but may return to it when I cover later Wizardries which may or may not involve them.

In many cases, I have chosen my own names to represent variables in the Pascal code, rather than use the names that Ewers chose, which, by his own admission, aren’t always the best names he could have used. For instance, what he calls LUCKSKIL[0], I call “Save vs. Death.” Bear this in mind if you decide to look at the Pascal code yourself and cross-reference it with my notes.

I won’t detail things that are self-explanatory, or that are already described in the original manual.

Character stats
Race not only determines your “base” stats, but it also grants a bonus to a saving throw. I’ll get into saving throws later; they are not mentioned in the manual or ever explicitly acknowledged in the game, but they are part of it.


STR IQ PIE VIT AGI LUC Saving throw
Human 8 8 5 8 8 9 -1 to Death
Elf 7 10 10 6 9 6 -2 to Wand (useless)
Dwarf 10 7 10 10 5 6 -4 to Breath
Gnome 7 7 10 8 10 7 -2 to Petrify
Hobbit 5 7 7 6 10 15 -3 to Spell

Bonus points and gold
When creating a new character, bonus points to assign to stats are typically 1d4+6. However, after these are assigned, there is a 1/11 chance of getting an additional 10 bonus points. And after that, as long as you don’t have 20 points already, there’s a 1/11 chance of getting ANOTHER 10 bonus points.

Approximate odds of bonus point ranges are:

7-10 90.9%
17-19 6.2%
20 2.3%
27-29 0.6%

Initial gold is set to 1d100 +89.

Strength
The only purpose of strength is to affect two hidden stats, “HitCalcMod” and “HitDam,” which affect your melee accuracy and damage. Values below 6 incur a penalty to both, and values above 15 incur a bonus to both. There is essentially no difference between a strength of 6 and a strength of 15. More on this later.

IQ and piety
Whenever you level up, each spell that you are eligible to learn has a chance of (IQ/30) to be learned. For priest spells, this is (Piety/30), of course. The first spell in each circle will always be learned as soon as it is possible to.

Each combat round, each character has a chance of (IQ + Piety + CharacterLevel)/99 to identify a monster group. The monster group identified is randomly chosen from 1-4, and if the monster group selected doesn't exist or has already been identified, then nothing happens.

Vitality
Chances of a successful Di or Kadorto are the target's Vitality * 4%. A success permanently lowers the target's Vitality by 1.

Chances of successfully raising a dead character at the Temple of Cant are (Vitality * 3%) + 50%.

Chances of successfully restoring an ashen character at the Temple of Cant are (Vitality * 3%) + 40%.

If a player's vitality goes below 3 for any reason, they are LOST. If this happens when leveling up, you get the "YOU HAVE DIED OF OLD AGE" message.

When leveling up, high and low vitality grants a maxHP bonus or penalty, which stacks with the class bonus.

VIT Effect
3 -2
4 -1
5 -1
16 +1
17 +2
18 +3
Agility
Each round, each character has an initiative roll of 1d10. Initiative is further modified by agility.

AGI Init. mod
3 +2
4,5 +1
6,7 0
8-14 -1
15 -2
16 -3
17 -4
18 -5

The modified result is clipped to the 1-10 range.

Monsters’ initiatives are each set to 1d8+1. Everyone acts in order of initiative, from lowest to highest.

If you step into a pit, each character has a chance of (Agility - Maze Level) * 4% to avoid damage.

If you Malor into the castle moat, each character has a chance of Agility * 4% to not drown.

Agility affects thievery success rates. More on that later.

Luck
Luck affects your saving throws. More on that in a minute.

Luck also appears to be programmed to do something when you teleport into rock (see the function BREAKPOS in SHOPS2), but I can't figure out what it does or why it would matter at that point.

Saving throws
Saving throws are a nearly invisible game mechanic, never listed on character sheets or explicitly referred to ingame. There are five saving throw types; Death, Petrify, Wand, Breath, and Spell.

Save vs. Death resists the effects of poison, paralysis, and critical hits in combat. It does not resist these effects from traps.

Save vs. Petrify resists the effects of stoning in combat. It does not resist the effect of petrifying traps.

Save vs. Wand does nothing at all!

Save vs. Breath resists breath attacks and gas traps. A successful save against a breath attack cuts the damage in half. A successful save against a gas trap nullifies the effect. It does not resist any spells.

Save vs. Spell resists the effects of the Montino spell, of anti-priest traps, and anti-mage traps. A successful save against Montino nullifies the effect. Priests and mages who save against such traps will be paralyzed (rather than stoned). Samurai and bishops who save against such traps will negate the effect (they are paralyzed in a failed save).

The chance for a character to make a successful saving throw can be expressed as:
(CharacterLevel/5 + Luck/6 – ClassBonus – RaceBonus) * 5%

Race and class bonuses are always negative, meaning that in this formula, you are subtracting a negative, which is the same as adding a positive. I already listed the race bonuses, but these are the class bonuses:
  • Fighters get -3 on Save vs. Death
  • Mages get -3 on Save vs. Spell
  • Priests get -3 on Save vs. Petrify
  • Thieves get -3 on Save vs. Breath
  • Bishops get -2 on Save vs. Petrify, Wand, & Spell
  • Samurai get -2 on Save vs. Death & Spell
  • Lords get -2 on Save vs. Death & Petrify
  • Ninjas get -3 on Save vs. Death & Breath, -2 on Save vs. Petrify & Spell, and -4 on Save vs. Wand

MaxLev
This hidden stat remembers the highest level you’ve achieved without getting drained - e.g. you reached level 10 as a fighter and then changed your class to a mage and are now a level 1 mage, but you now have the HP of a level 10 fighter. To reflect this, your MaxLev=10.

If you get level drained, then your new maxHP gets set to:
OldMaxHP * NewCharacterLevel/OldMaxLev

And your MaxLev gets set to your new reduced character level.

So for instance, if you're drained from level 2 to 1, you would normally lose half of your maxHP. But if you were a level 10 fighter previously, then you’d lose 90% of your inflated maxHP, which is pretty harsh!

Level
Your chance to heal ASLEEP status per round is Level * 10%, but not more than 50%.

Your chance to heal AFRAID status per round is Level * 5%, but not more than 50%. As far as I know, no monsters in Wizardry I inflict this status.

Your chance to resist Manifo is (Level * 10%) + 50%.

Your chance to resist Badi is Level * 10%.

Your chance to resist Katino is Level * 20%.

On casting Haman or Mahaman, there is a chance of 1/Level of losing spells. In this event, each known spell has 50% chance of being unlearned.

Loktofeit has a success rate of Level * 2%.

If you open a trapped chest, or misidentify a trap type when disarming, the odds of not triggering the trap are Level * 0.1% (in other words, abysmal at any level).

A bishop's chance to identify an object is (Level * 5%) + 10%.

Successful or not, there is a 35% - (Level * 3%) chance of accidentally equipping a cursed item.

HitCalcMod
A hidden stat mentioned previously, used to determine your hit odds.

Base value for fighters, priests, samurai, lords, and ninjas is (CharacterLevel/3) + 2.

Base value for mages, thieves, and bishops is (CharacterLevel/5).

If your strength is higher than 15, you get a (Strength – 15) bonus. If it’s below 6, then you get a (6 – Strength) penalty.

This value is further increased by equipping weapons, each of which has an invisible value.

Each strike’s chance of hitting is:
(HitCalcMod + MonsterAC + (3*Victim) - 1) * 5%

I am not 100% sure what “victim” means, but I think it refers to the monster’s group position in the fight. A group in the first position would have a victim value of 1, a group in the second position would have a victim value of 2, and so on, meaning monster groups in the rear group ranks are more vulnerable. This would be counterintuitive, and I have had trouble testing this theory, but it’s still my best guess on how it works.

ArmorClass
Base of 10, and reduced by armor and magic. All magic effects stack, except for multiple casts of Maporfic. Parrying has the invisible effect of reducing your AC by 2 for the round.

Your chance to be hit in melee per strike is:
(MonsterLevel + ArmorClass) * 5%

HealPts
Base of 0, and increased (or decreased!) solely by equipment. Every step and combat round has a 25% chance of healing your HP by this amount. Can be negative.

CritHit
Boolean value, always true for ninjas, and conferrable to non-ninjas with some items. When true, you have a chance to inflict critical hits.

SwingCount
The number of strikes per combat round.

Fighters, samurai, and lords have values of:
(CharacterLevel/5) + 1

Ninjas get:
(CharacterLevel/5) + 2

10 is the limit for these classes, and every other class only gets 1.

Each strike has its own chance to hit or miss, as determined by HitCalcMod.

Some weapons have a SwingCount value of their own. This does not stack with your character's value; the higher value is the one that takes. For thieves, mages, priests, and bishops, this is the only way to get more than one strike per round.

HitDam
An invisible stat representing your damage dice. Base value is 2d2, and is overridden when equipping a weapon.

If your strength is higher than 15, you get a (Strength – 15) bonus. If it’s below 6, then you get a (6 – Strength) penalty.

So let’s say you are a level 1 ninja with 17 strength, and you have a 1d6+1 weapon. Your ninja class allows you two strikes per round at level 1, and your 17 strength confers a +2 HitDam bonus. When you attack, you hit up to twice, and each hit will do 1d6+3 damage.

LostXYL
A multi-purpose variable. This stores the coordinates in the dungeon, as well as your awards, which in Wizardry 1 only include the chevron. But during an active expedition, the ‘X’ value of your coordinates is instead used to store your poison value. Because of this quirk, disbanding your party cures poison.

When poisoned, every step and combat round has a 25% of reducing your HP by 1. The engine allows for poison values greater than 1, but there are no game events that can raise your poison value past 1, and being poisoned while already poisoned does not make you more badly poisoned.

Wizardry
Dispell has a base success rate of 50% + (Level * 5%) – (MonsterLevel * 10%) per undead monster.

Bishops learn Dispell at level 3, and have a -20% penalty.

Lords learn Dispell at level 8, and have a -40% penalty.

Priests always have Dispell and use it without penalty.

Anti-mage traps affect mages and samurai.

Anti-priest traps affect priests and bishops, but not lords.

New mages and bishops start with Halito and Katino. Characters who change their class to mage learn Katino.

New priests start with Dios and Badios. Characters who change their class to priest learn Dios.

All spellcasting classes have two spellpoint values, used for the purpose of determining how many SP’s are gained per circle per level. The bishop is treated as two separate classes here, one for its mage spells and one for its priest spells.


A B
Priest 0 2
Mage 0 2
Bishop (Priest) 3 4
Bishop (Mage) 0 4
Lord (Priest) 3 2
Samurai (Mage) 3 3

SP’s per circle per level are determined by this formula:
[Character Level] – ValueA + ValueB – (ValueB * Circle)

The value is clipped to the 0-9 range.

So, for instance, a level 9 bishop would receive spell points accordingly:


1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Mage 9 5 1 0 0 0 0
Priest 6 2 0 0 0 0 0

A character is guaranteed one spell point in each circle for each known spell. This number is not added to the previous value, but compared, and the bigger number takes.

For instance, suppose a priest reaches level 9. The formula says his priest SP’s should look like this:
9/7/5/3/1/0/0

But suppose he miraculously learns all six priest spells in the fifth circle, and already knows all of the spells in the first four circles. His guaranteed SP’s, then, would be:
5/4/4/4/6/0/0

The game compares the value for each circle and selects the bigger one, resulting in:
9/7/5/4/6/0/0

Through this mechanic, an accomplished spellcaster can change classes and retain a respectable SP pool, because spells are not forgotten when changing classes or losing levels.

Former spellcasters who changed class can actually learn spells when levelling up! All characters are eligible to learn spells in any circle where they know at least one spell. A Mage who reaches level 13 will automatically learn Malor. Even if he learned no other level 7 Mage spells, he could then change to a Fighter or Priest, and then be eligible to learn more level 7 Mage spells, simply because he already knows one. However, if a Mage changed class before learning Malor, he would only be eligible to keep learning level 6 Mage spells.

Thievery
A thief's chance to successfully inspect traps is Agility * 6%, but never more than 95%.

A ninjas' chance to successfully inspect traps is Agility * 4%, but never more than 95%.

Calfo works 95% of the time.

All other's chance is Agility * 1%.

A failed inspect or Calfo will reveal the name of a random trap type.

The chance for a thief or ninja to disarm a correctly identified trap is:
(50 + Character Level - Maze Level)/70

The chance for anyone else is:
(Character Level - Maze Level)/70

If disarming fails, the chance to avoid setting off the trap is Agility * 5%.

Ninjutsu
Whenever a ninja inflicts damage, the odds of delivering a critical hit are (CharacterLevel * 2%), but no more than 50%.

Multiple strikes do not grant multiple chances to inflict critical hits. The overall attack gives one chance for a critical hit, and only if it inflicted at least one damage point.


Despite what the manual says, you are better off equipping ninjas. Unarmed ninjas do 2d4 base damage. That's better than the 2d2 of other classes, but it’s not hard to find better weapons! Ninjas can score critical hits just as well and just as frequently with weapons as without.

As for armor, a naked ninja’s AC is:
8 – [Character Level]/3

Not really worth it, I think! A naked ninja would need to be level 21 to match the effect of wearing just Evil Plate +3.

Leveling up
When you level up, each stat has a 75% to change.

If a stat changes, there is an (AgeInYears/130) chance that it decreases by 1 point. Otherwise, it increases by 1 point.

If a stat would decrease from 18 to 17, there is a 5/6 chance that it will stay at 18 anyway.

If a stat would increase from 18 to 19, then it will stay at 18 instead.

Whenever you level up, your maxHP is essentially re-rolled.
  • Fighters and lords roll d10’s.
  • Priests and samurai roll d8’s.
  • Thieves, bishops, and ninjas roll d6’s.
  • Mages roll d4’s.

Each class rolls once per level, except for Samurai, who roll one additional time (e.g. a level 5 samurai rolls 6 times). Each roll is further modified by the character’s vitality.

So, for example, if a Thief reaches level 12, and has vitality of 18, this means rolling 1d6 +3 twelve times and summing the results. We would expect an average sum of 78. This sum becomes the thief’s new HP, provided it’s bigger than the previous value.

If the new HP value is not greater than it was before levelling up, then the result is discarded and you just gain 1 HP.

Because maxHP is recalculated on each level up, and it can’t go down, it trends toward the high end of what’s possible for your class. This is also why HP gains are slow after switching classes; your HP is higher than it “should” be for your new class at low levels, so your HP won’t grow until you’re a high enough level that you “should” be gaining again.

Aging
Surprisingly, and contradicting the manual, resting does NOT increase your age! Is this a bug?

Age is internally stored in weeks, but displayed in years.

New characters are a random age from 18 years, to 23 years and 39 weeks.

Changing class ages the character 1d3+3 years, plus 44 weeks.

Disbanding the party ages everyone in it 25 weeks.

Any service at the Temple of Cant ages the character 1d52 weeks.

Despite what the manual says, age does not affect the success rate of resurrection. Vitality does, though.

Statuses
Statuses from best to worst are:
OK, AFRAID, ASLEEP, PLYZE, STONED, DEAD, ASHES, LOST

It is not possible to have multiple statuses, and if you are inflicted with one while already inflicted with another, then the worse status will keep. Poison, however, is not a status, and can exist concurrently with one.

Prices to cure status at the Temple of Cant:
  • PLYZE: 100 * CharacterLevel
  • STONED: 200 * CharacterLevel
  • DEAD: 250 * CharacterLevel
  • ASHES: 500 * CharacterLevel
Poison is automatically cured when returning to town.

Alignment
The party alignment is determined by its first non-neutral member. If all members are neutral, then the party is neutral.

Neutral and evil parties will never encounter friendly monsters.

If you choose to fight a friendly group of monsters, each good party member has a 1/2000 chance to turn evil.

Misc
Every step has a 1% chance of an encounter.

Kicking a door into a treasure room which has no treasure chest has a 12.5% chance of causing an encounter.

When you run, odds of success are:
39% – (MazeLevel * 3%)

If the party size is 3 or less then add this to the above odds:
20% - (PartyCount * 5%)

If the monsters are demoralized (e.g. some of them want to run), then add 20% to the odds.

Running NEVER works in level 10!

In any unfriendly encounter, there is a 19% chance of surprising the monsters, and a 15.4% chance that the monsters surprise you.


That’s plenty for this post, but we’re far from done. More data is to come in the subsequent posts.
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
Wizardry 5 (PC)
Man, I just cannot make any progress in this game. I keep getting wiped trying to make meaningful progress on level 7, so I decided to play it safe and just SLOWLY explore it—I'm talking, explore a room, win a battle, and then run to the chute down to level 8 and escape.

However, even if I use this extremely tedious strategy, I often get drained and or party wiped on my way back to the castle on level 8. I just can't think of what I can even do in these encounters; I'm using TILTOWAIT with both mages and often the cleric's multigroup damage spell, too (since MONTINO basically never works), but enemies seem to be highly magic resistant, so you can't even rely on TILTOWAIT really. On top of that, I can't remember the last time the game allowed me to run from combat; can you even escape from the encounters on level 8? It really seems like a crapshoot and totally up to luck if you'll survive. Is there some extremely useful spell I'm missing?
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
I don't recall Wiz 5 being that brutal. Unfortunately it's a while since I played it, so I don't remember any detailed tactics.
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
Oh for pete's sake... I was just reading the manual to check for hints I missed and... you can quick save in the dungeon???? I've been playing this like Wiz 1-3 all this time and only saving in the Castle lol

 
Last edited:

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
I wish I had known about the quick save all along. :( I would have finished this game months ago!

I now quick save at the beginning of whatever level I'm currently exploring. If I get some horrible outcome (party wipe, key item stolen, some other worse-than-death outcome from traps), I just reset the game and restart from the dungeon save. The game doesn't save each step or even during/after combat, so I don't feel like I'm cheating that much as I'm using an option the game itself provides.

In a couple hours of play I've got all of level 7 (besides the stuff in the center blocked by the card guys) and all of level 8 (that I can tell) explored, so I'm pretty certain I'm at or near the endgame. I dunno if I can finish this at average party level 15, but we'll see!
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
Careful when saving near the end, as it may mess things up if you reload, and make the game unwinnable. At least that's what happened to me.
I once swore that I would never replay Wiz 5, but since I didn't technically finish it, maybe I will one day.
 

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