Wizardry Wizardry Chronicles for Windows (PC) - Translation Project to English COMPLETE!!! V0.983b Released!!

[octavius]

This was a hard nut to crack, and I'm moving on.
Hopefully it was not a vital puzzle to solve.

Please leave some hints in quotes for future adventurers please (mostly people like myself who aren't good at solving tricky puzzles)

Well, for the first part you need to string letters together so they form a sentence. It's just a matter of finding the right pattern.

The second part has really baffled me. I guess I'm better with letters than numbers...

This was a hard nut to crack, and I'm moving on.
Hopefully it was not a vital puzzle to solve.

Are you saying you couldn't get it? I can be a bit more direct if you want.

Please do, but in spoilers. I've moved on from that puzzle to nicer things like Dragon Zombies, but having a hint ready if I have to revisit it would be handy.


Incidentally, I had to laugh at the Hols-Sin spell which is supposed to kill Demons. Yeah, I'm sure it very nice, if the demons didn't have 95-100% magic resistance...

 

[Shackleton]

You will need to know the answer to this to proceed past floor 12, so here's some more direct hints. Pics below of all the clues. (I screenshotted them when I was playing and still have the folder. ) I'm telling you now, you'll kick yourself!

Spoiler

The first clue. Cast off wisdom means exactly what you thought. The letters and numbers aren't the concern...

Spoiler

The second clue. Look at the big picture- ie, all the clues together

Spoiler

The third clue. The 'sky' in this case means the blanks. Took me a while after I'd got the answer to see the link with this one, it's a bit tenuous i must admit.

Spoiler

The last clue. Pretty much spells it out for you. Layer the clues on top of each other and see what appears...

last spoiler contains the answer, open at your own peril!

Spoiler

Really?

Spoiler

Told you you'd kick yourself.

 

[octavius]

God damned! I never would have thought of that!
It even took me half a minute to realize what I was looking at.

 

[octavius]

Ack, nearly forgot the absolute most important tip!

If you get the Teleport spell and think you'll have a go teleporting around the levels where you think there might be secret rooms- BACKUP YOUR SAVE FIRST!

It auto saves if you teleport into rock and that's your party gone if you haven't copied your wizsave.dat into another folder ready to replace it. I'm sure most veterans wouldn't be caught out with this, but I'd hate someone to lose 40+ hours of game in an instant by playing with teleport.

A hardcore Ironman player (not me) would develop a mage who can cast the spell that releases the unfortunate party.
I wonder how many time you could play Deep Purple's "In Rock" while you grind up that character...

EDIT: or you can get lucky and find a scroll with the spell.

 

[octavius]

Found the Muramasa Blade, with highest Attack I've seen so far: 125.

But now I really, really wish I had an Archer. Those magic resistant Zombie Dragons and magic immune Poison Giants are a major pain in the ass indeed, especially when they surprise you. But I guess it's too much to hope for to find an item that changes class to Archer. I've found items that change class to Ninja, Bishop and Bard, though.

And those Devil Messias that drain three (!!!) levels in one hit. Maybe a Priest/Mendic with 20 Speed would have been best; high Piety doesn't seem to have much effect. But of course that doesn't help if you're being surprised.

 

[octavius]

Ready to descend to floor 15.
The worst difficulty spike so far was on floor 14, with Devil Messiahs, Faint Assassins (very fast and four (!!!) attacks per round (why the hell don't my characters get more than one APR?!?)), and unsually annoying enemy compositions, like this one:

But I found some nice loot:

(Wot? My samurai don't get critical hit even with this blade? So why do enemy samurais get critical hits?!?)

(Need more of these)

(Weeell...)

Also got a Dark Robe for my mage. That, and the White Robe for Good mages, is the only thing I've seen so far that protects against breath attacks. It rather pisses me off that the various protection spells only works against fire, poison etc from spells. Useless spells since the lvl 4 magic barrier spell is virtually foolproof, and it bounces damage spells back at the caster.

 

[octavius]

After half a dozen tries 3-Eyes went down (he wasn't quite as tough as 1000 Eyes of Wiz 7).

Spoiler

Tactics was the same with all bosses: buff with bard, pound with fighters, reduce AC with priest, erect barriers and cast spells (on the off chance it may work) on alternate turns with mage.
Was lucky with two Nukes working and with only three party members left alive GaGaNu went down.
Samurai with Muramasa Blade turned out to be the toughest guy in the end.

My victorious party:

Spoiler

I jinxed it a bit by naming him Sir Vivor; he was reduced six level in all after close encounters with Devil Messiahs.

The Princess's Kukri was a surprisingly good weapon that had a decent chance of doing this:

Being a Tairon severly reduces chances of getting bonus value STR and VIT. OTOH DEX is pretty important for opening chests and she did become good at it eventually. In the boss fights I replaced her with a Bard since only a Bard can buff the fighters, and I doubt critical hits work on bosses at all.
Never found a Shuriken for her, which would have been great against those annoying Poison Giants.

His special spell "Abith-Death", which sucks up one enemy, was useless since it never worked on monsters you wanted it to work on, like Faint Assassins.
The Muramasa Blade's power to increase STR was also useless since it doesn't increase beyond racial cap. Could have been useful for a Tairon Samurai only.

Most powerful fighter for most of the game.

All in all a solid blobber. Nothing novel or original, but a good challenge with decent level design and monster and item variety. The wandering NPCs parties were done better in Wiz 7, and the chances for botching Resurrection is way too high for such a long and and hard game, making it virtually impossible to Ironman.

Only game I've ever actively grinded, so could have been better balanced. But I guess the Need to Grind is a Japanese thing?

 

[Grauken]

After half a dozen tries 3-Eyes went down (he wasn't quite as tough as 1000 Eyes of Wiz 7).

Spoiler

Tactics was the same with all bosses: buff with bard, pound with fighters, reduce AC with priest, erect barriers and cast spells (on the off chance it may work) on alternate turns with mage.
Was lucky with two Nukes working and with only three party members left alive GaGaNu went down.
Samurai with Muramasa Blade turned out to be the toughest guy in the end.

My victorious party:

Spoiler

I jinxed it a bit by naming him Sir Vivor; he was reduced six level in all after close encounters with Devil Messiahs.

The Princess's Kukri was a surprisingly good weapon that had a decent chance of doing this:

Being a Tairon severly reduces chances of getting bonus value STR and VIT. OTOH DEX is pretty important for opening chests and she did become good it eventually. In the boss fights I replaced her with a Bard since only a Bard can buff the fighters, and I doubt critical hits work on bosses at all.
Never found a Shuriken for her, which would have been great against those annoying Poison Giants.

His special spell "Abith-Death", which sucks up one enemy, was useless since it never worked on monsters you wanted it to work on, like Faint Assassins.
The Muramasa Blase's power to increase STR was also useless since it doesn't increase beyond racial cap. Could have been useful for a Tairon Samurai only.

Most powerful fighter for most of the game.

All in all a solid blobber. Nothing novel or original, but a good challenge with decent level design and monster and item variety. The wandering NPCs parties were done better in Wiz 7, and the chances for botching Resurrection is way too high for such a long and and hard game, making it virtually impossible to Ironman.

Only game I've ever actively grinded, so could have been better balanced. But I guess the Need to Grind is a Japanese thing?

Congrats, really enjoyed your blogging about this

 

[octavius]

So, are you gonna play it, Grauken?
And will aweigh ever finish it?

So far Shackleton and myself may be the only gaijins to have beaten it.

BTW, I found a very lengthy discussion about it on some Japanese board; an interesting release thread since it dates back all the way to 2001. Remember when the Internet seemed finite, and there was no Google and no Facebook?

 

[Grauken]

So, are you gonna play it, Grauken?
And will aweigh ever finish it?

So far Shackleton and myself may be the only gaijins to have beaten it.

BTW, I found a very lengthy discussion about it on some Japanese board, so it's not entirely forgotten in Japan.

Probably at some point, but not this year, too busy with other stuff

 

[Shackleton]

So, are you gonna play it, Grauken?
And will aweigh ever finish it?

So far Shackleton and myself may be the only gaijins to have beaten it.

BTW, I found a very lengthy discussion about it on some Japanese board; an interesting release thread since it dates back all the way to 2001. Remember when the Internet seemd finite, and there was mo Google and no Facebook?

There's a postgame as well, but I'm ashamed to admit I didn't get that far into it before starting something else and dropping it. If you press on and do the postgame you'll get major KKK.

 

[octavius]

And we have reached a new level of tediousness on floor 16:

Highly resistant to magic and beathes for about 60 points of damage, this is just tedious.
And what do learn from defeating them? Not much, even if we earn quite a bit.

Overall floor 16 has been a decline so far. Monsters seem to give less XP and poorer loot, but they hit every bit as hard.

 

[octavius]

Found mostly utter crap on floor 16. Only things worth keeping (since I actually use them instead of hoarding or selling them) were some Rods of Flame.

Enemies not following the same rules is starting to get annoying too, with all humanoid enemies having multiple APR, while my lvl 30+ characters are still stuck at 1 APR. And now nearly all of them have high magic resistance too, so things get rather tedious when you don't get more fat loot.
Hopefully things will improve on floor 17. There' still lots of items left on the in-game item list, and they have to be somewhere.

 

[octavius]

My Mendicin reached his full spell potential, so I decided to switch him to Ninja to improve his AC and be able to use a missile weapon (Shakram; haven't found a Shuriken yet). As long as I don't level him up he won't lose spells, so I think it's a good choice. Even better would have been if I could find an item that changes him to Archer, but so far even floor 17 yields only junk. Higher level junk than on floor 16, but still junk.

 

[octavius]

Worst Case Scenario: being surprised by 4 Death Giants, each breathing poison for 192 points.

 

[octavius]

Mostly done with floor 18, which was actually easier than floors 16 and 17 (Erasor Demons are significantly less scary than Devil Messiahs and the local karate kids only have one APR, for example), but still no new items showing up, which is pissing me off.

I hope this means a set encounter ala Wiz 1:

EDIT: It wasn't.

 

[octavius]

On floor 19 I finally found some interesting loot:

Too bad my Swordsman is a Wallback. With his lousy AC he's much safer thrusting with his Naginata from behind.

My Medincin turned Ninja was due for another level and as expected he lost his lvl 7 spell. So I reloaded, turned him into a Bishop instead, leveled him up, and then used another Ninja Tanto to turn him back to a Ninja. He's a bit more useful when he can throw a Chakram and occasionally score critical hits.

 

[octavius]

Floor 20. I think this is the last one, but there's still many empty slots in item (200/256) and monster (176/201) lists.

Only suckers or brave, square jawed heroes would ignore that warning.

Well, waddayaknow, a non-conform boss encounter:

Spoiler

 

[victim]

Stoked to play this game but getting the sound to work is going to be really annoying

 

[octavius]

I turned off the sound (from Window's "Mixer") long time ago, so long ago (like several weeks) that now I forgot why. Usually I turn off sound when there's no separate controls for sound effects and music, since constant music starts to grate on my after a while.

EDIT: turned on sound again, put on my headphones to check, and I must say the sound effects are quite weak, and you don't miss much. No constant music, though, so now I wonder why I turned off sound in the first place.

 

[octavius]

Completed the game.
Turns out that Ypram punk was the final boss, but he was so much weaker than the previous ones, and was available right away if you choose a door that leads to a teleporter. So you can either take the teleporter and beat him right away, or run the gauntlet through a dozen or so rooms with dual teleporters, one which teleports you back to start and the other one to the next room.

The final quest was this:

Spoiler

Ypram carried the Amulet and this was our reward for returning it to Renard/Leonard (seems to have been a case of two different translations):

Spoiler

Wow! 5000 gold!!! That sure will come in handy. And I bet that bow is an awesome artifact that will rip a Death Giant several new assholes in one shot.
Let's see...

Spoiler

So the final five levels were really not worth playing. Only found decent loot on the last two floors and with the exception of the sword I mentioned earlier all of it was things I'd seen before. So there's no real incentive loot-wise. Or maybe there some über items that have a very slim chance of dropping? Never found a Shuriken, for example.

Final playing time: 333.55
Items: 200/256 found
Bestiary: 178/201 found

Thank you to MrRichard999 and the others who made this game available in English!

 

[Grauken]

333.55 hours?

 

[victim]

I turned off the sound (from Window's "Mixer") long time ago, so long ago (like several weeks) that now I forgot why. Usually I turn off sound when there's no separate controls for sound effects and music, since constant music starts to grate on my after a while.

EDIT: turned on sound again, put on my headphones to check, and I must say the sound effects are quite weak, and you don't miss much. No constant music, though, so now I wonder why I turned off sound in the first place.

If you're got the game as an ISO its possible there is background music and it just wasn't working due to the way the file was burned

 

[Grauken]

I turned off the sound (from Window's "Mixer") long time ago, so long ago (like several weeks) that now I forgot why. Usually I turn off sound when there's no separate controls for sound effects and music, since constant music starts to grate on my after a while.

EDIT: turned on sound again, put on my headphones to check, and I must say the sound effects are quite weak, and you don't miss much. No constant music, though, so now I wonder why I turned off sound in the first place.

If you're got the game as an ISO its possible there is background music and it just wasn't working due to the way the file was burned

what do you mean?

 

[octavius]

333.55 hours?

I think so. But it's not the actual playing time, since the counter works when the game is paused. And since I played it in a window it was open when I was doing other things. So the number is a bit misleading.