Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[kmonster]

In wizardry 6 your vitality at character creation is the only stat which affects the spell regeneration rate. If you start with 16+ vitality your mana regenerates faster and you get more mana at level up.
If you wasted stat points for int and pie instead of spending them for str and vit consider creating a new party. When creating my W6 party I put all free stat points into str+vit. If possible vit was raised to 16 (if not, focus on strength) and then the remaining points were put into str.

 

[Foxtrix]

According to the manual it is piety which affects spell power on level up and mana regeneration. Did they also botch it here? And what about wiz7, which stat governs mana gain and regeneration in wiz7?

 

[Virtual Vice]

There does seem to be a work around to the level scaling that is similar to Oblibian. You can stave off leveling and just rack up skills. Of course you'll occasionally want to level up as enemies cap out. The idea is to be generally the same level as the enemies in the current zone, but have vastly superior skills that don't need level ups to be raised. If you are a faggot who cares about grinding then you can grind skills and ignore leveling.
..I'm not actually sure if this works since I haven't tested it out, but it was an idea that did pop up in my head.

You can do a little spell play to extend fights with harmless but reasonably resistant enemies,since you can heal them etc, effectively actively training skills. It can make a huge difference at certain level ranges, especially with melee hybrids like the samurai. I wouldnt call it getting around level scaling, but it can help you level up faster once you reach the caps and get through easy encounters more quickly, besides it really doesnt take alot of time/patience.

I suppose this could be considered a no no exploit like the knife throwing and the crows in JA2, depends on taste I think, but it is far from being game breaking in a game like Wiz 8.

 

[DraQ]

You can do a little spell play to extend fights with harmless but reasonably resistant enemies,since you can heal them etc, effectively actively training skills.

I wouldn't call it an exploit (since you could do such thing in universe with instant healing spells), but Jesus Fucking Christ, don't you people have anything better to do?

 

[Falkentyne]

Hi guys,
I don't know if anyone remembers, but Scorpia from CGW once mentioned a famous trick you could do to transfer most of the transferrable items from a Wizardry 6 endgame save to 7, without all but one or two equipped items (depending on strength, although some items ALWAYS Transferred) being unable to make the transfer. Does anyone remember the trick? This was like 20 years ago, but I remember she mentioning something about "dropping your entire inventory" BEFORE a pre-game cutscene appeared. Basically, she said that there is a moment where all of the "valid" W6 items that also exist in W7, are still on your character.....But which cutscene, and what key do you press? I've tried numbers 1-6 to bring up the character slots, but the cutscenes just go happily along, until you start on Guardia....

 

[Stabwound]

Thread necromancy, but I thought it would be better to bump this than post a new thread.

I just started playing this last night and am going in pretty much blind, other than reading some advice regarding dual classing. Fucking awesome game. I'm ashamed to admit that I've never played any of the classic Wizardry games much (outside of 8) and I regret it now. I'm planning to do a 6, 7, 8 run-through eventually. I never tried Wiz 6 because making your own maps is too hardcore for me, so I'm using some maps I found online and editing out the points of interest so I can label them myself. Seems good enough to me to feel like I'm not cheating and doing some of the work myself.

My party is:

Felpurr Fighter
Dwarf Valkyrie
Mook Fighter
Human Bard
Faerie Mage
Elf Priest

I had some sort of future dual classing plan but I can't remember it off hand. I was planning on dualing everyone at some point, anyway. Also I'm not rerolling levelup skill gains, which I've seen people talk about doing but it seems too cheesy to me. Bad idea?

I think I kind of fucked up with not giving my Bard any skulduggery at first; he has about 8 points now, and either that's not enough to pick any kind of lock or I don't understand the lockpicking system at all. Maybe it's because of Dosbox, but I just see a few numbers flashing so rapidly that I can't even read them. How exactly does it work?

It's a great game so far, anyway.

 

[Nael]

Thread necromancy, but I thought it would be better to bump this than post a new thread.

I just started playing this last night and am going in pretty much blind, other than reading some advice regarding dual classing. Fucking awesome game. I'm ashamed to admit that I've never played any of the classic Wizardry games much (outside of 8) and I regret it now. I'm planning to do a 6, 7, 8 run-through eventually. I never tried Wiz 6 because making your own maps is too hardcore for me, so I'm using some maps I found online and editing out the points of interest so I can label them myself. Seems good enough to me to feel like I'm not cheating and doing some of the work myself.

My party is:

Felpurr Fighter
Dwarf Valkyrie
Mook Fighter
Human Bard
Faerie Mage
Elf Priest

I had some sort of future dual classing plan but I can't remember it off hand. I was planning on dualing everyone at some point, anyway. Also I'm not rerolling levelup skill gains, which I've seen people talk about doing but it seems too cheesy to me. Bad idea?

I think I kind of fucked up with not giving my Bard any skulduggery at first; he has about 8 points now, and either that's not enough to pick any kind of lock or I don't understand the lockpicking system at all. Maybe it's because of Dosbox, but I just see a few numbers flashing so rapidly that I can't even read them. How exactly does it work?

It's a great game so far, anyway.

Yeah, you need at least 10 in skullduggery at the bare minimum to pick two-tumbler doors. And even then you'll be doing a lot of saving and reloading to get one to pop open for you. Lockpicking/Trap disarming is notoriously banalshit in Wiz6 and 7.

 

[kmonster]

You don't have to give any skullduggery to your bard, the skill can go up by trying even if you fail (the lower your skill the higher the chance for a skill raise). Save before you first try the lock and keep on retrying until it's either jammed (reload) or opened (don't ever save between), you can also have your strongest character bash the lock instead or cast the spell (but try picking once or twice first to get a chance for skill raise). Success is purely random, you don't have to click at the right moment.
It's possible to start with 0 skullduggery and pick the locks without spending a single skill point at level up if you enforce your luck.
If you don't like using save/reload at locks you also have the option to find keys in random encounters to pick jammed doors.

I played and finished the game without ever reloading at level up or class switching at all, it was perfectly balanced for this.

If you plan switching and still don't have the stats for this at level 7 you might consider reloading the following level ups so you can switch at level 8-9, switching at high levels costs many XP and slows down levelling in the final class considerably, be aware that for almost everything in combat your character level relative to the enemy is checked.

At character creation 2 things are fixed until the end of the game, carrying capacity ((str+str+vit)*4.5) and spell regeneration rate (which will be low for your first 4 characters and high for the 2 casters, I hope all your characters started with 16 vit for the bonus), the other stats are unimportant unless you need them for switching into the next class.

 

[Stabwound]

I didn't make an effort to have 16 vit - I hope that's not going to be a pain. Thanks for the rest of the tips, though.

I have a stupid question: is there a way to tell what damage a weapon does? Maybe I'm stupid but when looking at swords, etc I see nothing about what damage they do.

 

[Fowyr]

Afair, just use identify item spell. Assay don't show damages, it only show which classes can use item.

 

[Stabwound]

This game is awesome - I'm having a blast with it. I was always a bigger fan of Might & Magic because of the automapping, but this is totally playable with printed maps from online. Cheating to some, probably, but I have no fucking idea how someone would manually map the mines. I almost had an aneurysm trying to navigate them, and that was with pre-made maps. I guess I'm just too much of a pussy.

I find it difficult as fuck, though, in the puzzle department, and this is from someone that grew up on Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games. I've been using a walkthrough for hints at places, because I don't have the time to wander around for hours on end trying to find something I missed: again, seems crazy that people finished it without any help whatsoever. Some of the puzzles are pretty obscure.

I also went back on my vow of not reloading for better stats on levelups for the purpose of class switching. It feels pretty corny, but I wouldn't have been able to class change for a long time if I didn't. I find it a lot more fun to class change, anyway. It's funny how Dragon Quest (JRPG) ripped off the class system from Wizardry and gets hailed as some kind of great innovator.

On that topic of class switching, I have a question: is there any downside to repeatedly switching back and forth from mage -> priest and vice-versa? Other than being an aspie behaviour it seems to me like it's a way to build spell points and skills rapidly, as the requirements are extremely easy to get depending on race, and you can level from 1 to 4-5 in a single battle or two. I realize that you'll quickly run out of spells to memorize and won't get any high powered ones, but it doesn't mean you can't level higher eventually.

 

[ortucis]

Installing Wizardry 8 on Windows 7 x64 - The 32-bit installer shows up in task manager but nothing shows up after autorun. Is there some custom installer for newer machines?

Also, compatibility modes don't work.

 

[Stabwound]

I installed it on 7 x64 without any issue at all just a few weeks ago. No screwing around at all required. Maybe try exploring the disc (through My Computer, right click it and explore) and running it there? I can't remember exactly what I did but I'm pretty sure the install button from the autorun menu worked fine.

 

[DraQ]

It works on my rig, but I'm not sure if I didn't just copypasta the files from my older machine as I tend to do whenever possible.

 

[Duckard]

Same thing happened to me when I tried installing it yesterday. It worked properly when I closed everything I had open and ran the installer.

 

[ortucis]

Doesn't work. Tried everything now.


Whelp, screw it, probably wasn't a good game anyway. Time to move on.


While we're at it, FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!

 

[Satan]

an alpha version has issues?! FUCK YOU MICROSOFT, HOW COULD YOU?!

 

[ender686]

try installing in safe mode

 

[Grunker]

^ what he/she/it said. It works for a surprising number of games where the installer hangs.

That is, windows 7 in safe mode.

 

[ortucis]

I didn't know Windows Installer service worked under safe mode in W7.

I'll give it a try on next boot (which would be in 2-3 days). Thanks.

 

[MMXI]

Wizardry 8 installs fine for me on Windows 7 x64. I do remember a mate of mine having the same problem you seem to be having, but he managed to get it working in the end. I'm not sure how.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Check whether you have gotten your "Windows 7 Application Compatibility update" or somesuch. Microsoft has/had a team of guys go back to lots of old games that didn't work (usually because of 64bit) and implemented application-specific fixes for each. Don't know whether it affects Wizardry but I know it fixed Thief 2 for me.

 

[ortucis]

try installing in safe mode

Well I'll be..

IT WORKED!


Finally I can play the bestestest game ever created according to Codex. I can't wait to launch this game.. right after a good game of SWAT4 MP.





EDIT: I only ran the setup so far and it (surprisingly) gave me an option for my native resolution (1080p). Should I run it in DX7 only or is there some DX9 mod or some patch I should use to play this game (no gameplay changing mods please)?

 

[ortucis]

Did you find a fix for this? Image stretches on 1080p (game supports all resolutions it seems).

I can't find a mod for this issue.

 

[hydd]

The config file for W8 doesn't have any limits as far as I can tell for resolution. It lets me attempt to load the game at 2560x1600. Although, I just get a black screen.