Wizardry Long Live Wizardry! (And The All-New Games By Ex-Wizardry Developers)

[Siveon]

Ow, my eyes.

 

[aweigh]

WTF JAPAN



hehe that gif above is the first gif i've ever made. was watching a speed-run of NES wiz1 and that is literally what was happening

 

[Dorarnae]

yeah that's post game. I don't think you need to farm that much though. In the first game I had around 1-2k hp with everyone and managed to kill the post game boss without much trouble.


the only monster I didn't kill in the game, is the dragon npc in the first dungeon. Staying alive against it isn't hard, it's just because my mage can't dmg him and I need to get some gear from the post game dungeon because my melee sucks too...

 

[Suicidal]

by the way people if you do a google search for any string containing the words "Wizardry" + "List"/"Empire"/"Translation"/"Game Boy"/"Remake"/"Playstation"/"SNES"/"Remake"/"Complete"/"Japanese"/"Werdna" (!!!)/etc...

GUESS WHAT MOTHERFUCKING THREADS APPEAR IN THE FIRST PAGE BITCHES

edit: oh, jrpg forum thread about elminage also appears in the 1st page of results if you searc for elminage informaiton

RPG Codex - your number one source for JRPG information

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae

check out how i roll man. Ita-chan ain't got nothing on me

 

[Celerity]

You got a Ring! You got a Strange Thing!

Lol, you died. Lol lol, you died... Lol, you died...

 

[Dorarnae]

lol.
if you already got some loot from the first few floor you should just leave those chest and wait til you get some character with the spell to open them.
I am also surprised that you have to enter coordination for teleport, that's a lot more dangerous hehe.

wait a sec, did you actually use the spell to disarm? it should of worked.

 

[aweigh]

the disarm trap spell only has 95 chance to work, same as in elminage series. it is not guaranteed.

in pc version the warp spell works same as in regular wizardry. and yeah, i've stopped with farming those things already; i went ahead and adventured onto the third floor, the "eclipse floor", and like a dumbass fell through a chute and spent 1 hour and change navigating a hell maze in b4f until i finally reached a stair/warp to b6f and promptly died to the first random battle. foolishly i had used malor to warp some super tough enemies out of my face and then the next fight my ninja failed disarming a magic drain trap and i lost my last malor, so i could not warp to safety. hehe they also disabled the lektofeit (honey restorer) spell that warps you home... ah well, at least i know i can handle b4f, but not b6f yet.

 

[Dorarnae]

really? I never seen it fail....
the one that identify the trap I knew wasn't always accurate but not the disarm one

 

[Celerity]

No, he's right. Calfo or whatever it's called has always been 95%.

 

[Dorarnae]

I checked the wiki for elminage 1- 3 and gothic and it says it's 100%. don't know about empire though, could be different from the ps1 version.

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae did you roll with Rangers in wiz emp? i've been regretting making one since the game's beginning but now FINALLY, FINALLY !!! the game deigned to give me some l33t arrows for him and the fucker's even out-damaging my two samurai's. i really wish they could equip a few of the fighter-swords instead of just being relegated to daggers, short-swords and bows/arrows. i've tried putting him in front with two daggers of speed but it just doesn't fit into the grand scheme. sure, he does respectable dagger damage but that front-row spot he's occupying is waaay better utilized by a fighter/samurai/ninja/lord/valkyrie/etc, since he can hang back and shoot arrows for respectable damage.

a well, at least they're better than thieves :D

ah thieves... so useless. they'll never change.

i really like the system the game uses where clothes that give more protections (higher -AC) always carry a THACO penalty modifier, hehe. i wonder why Starfish dropped that. It makes juggling gear sets on your chars super fun and a bit more strategical. right now of my two sammy's i have one samura dual-wielding swords that have high # of atk's per swing, but to achieve all of the attacks he needs maximum THACO power so he's wearing all "light" armor pieces that give bonuses to THACO but have mediocre defense, and he's a real true-blue glass cannon. you can really tell the difference between 1, 2 and 3 points of extra THACO in the character's damage + his # of swings. It's a very simple system that really works.

and speaknig of thaco: wooow ninjas are fucking OP in wiz-emp series. all the ninja gear (and there's a TON) has excellent -AC and excellent bonuses to THACO. plus the fuckers can dual-wield shurikens here unlike elminage where they made then main-hand weapons instead of sub-weapons cos they probably realized how crazy things can get with dual demon shurikens beheading shit left and right from the back row haha

 

[Celerity]

Heavy armor penalizes accuracy? Knowing what I know of Wizardry style combat, that's the same as saying it's useless because of how offense biased the entire game is.

 

[Dorarnae]

I probably tried them a bit but not sure. I usually go with thief instead for better inspect/disarm. but when I replayed wizardry empire 1 (or 3 I don't remember lol), I kind of regret playing with the thief because he failed wayyy to many time at some point. the stats on my thief were good, and later on my ninja who was quite high had no problem disarming, so I think disarming isn't only stats but also level. so a ranger would of been better in beginning for getting spell heh.

elminage 1-3 has some good sub shuriken too, in particular the third game had a special weapon that added a couple bad status.
with alchemist you can always make your weapon usable in left hand too.(well except psp/pc gothic version where some items cannot be changed with alchemy...)

 

[aweigh]

Heavy armor penalizes accuracy? Knowing what I know of Wizardry style combat, that's the same as saying it's useless because of how offense biased the entire game is.

you really DO know your wizardry. yes, you are of course 100% correct. the second dual-wielding was introduced into the wizardry-formula shields became obsolete hehe

 

[aweigh]

oh man i have my post-game ninja in elminage: gothic using a demon shuriken in main-hand and an alchemized regular shuriken in the sub-hand (alchemized to be wielded as a sub-weapon). shit's crazy. of course the enemies are 10 times crazier heh, so it evens out.

somewhat on topic: the key to wiz combat is that # of attacks are tied to character class level advancement, AND to the primary attributes of the character AND to magical properties on equipped gear or on the weapon; these are then resolved versus the -AC of the opponent. it's sooooo simple and yet soooo perfect. if the game is made competently this guarantees a healthy power curve that... well, i don't think it has any real limits really other than common sense. the japs sure seem hell-bent on breaking wide-open the wizardry system until it cries for mercy with their post-games lol

of course this always means the goddamn direct-damage spells bottom out half-way through the game. it's not exactly feasible to make damaging spells usabale both by you and by the enemy to scale similarly to melee combat because spells have a butt-load more variables and are multi-target and they resolve versus multiple defenses as opposed to melee.

edit: in Gothic's ibag's tower there ARE enemies that bring the pain with scaled-damage spells because of their ridiculously absurd stats. the window-pane guy floating in the air, Terror i think is his name, i remember from the bestiary has a motherfucking 52 INT score and his enterook mistas are DEADLY. literally the ONLY defense against such ridiculous attrition is to level up and have many more Hit Points. that's it. and be sure to kill 'em in the motherfucking 1st or 2nd round or it's your own fault.

 

[Dorarnae]

or play with a shaman hehe.

I would agree that elminage gothic dmg spell kinda suck at the end and you're better with melee. but in elminage 1-2-3, mage are OP, 3 in particular, they're really ridiculous with a certain passive skill. my lvl 15k mage (with a lightning +3 charm crafted that gives like +600 total) can do like 30-40k dmg with ziakalad

 

[Celerity]

It's funny because usually these games become AoE spam fest with Mage spells. Dark Spire is a real big example. If every single one of your characters were not half Mage you were Doing It Wrong, just because single target fights were just not a thing, there were always several groups of enemies and potentially 4x9 groups. It also helped magic resist was non binary vs nukes, so while enemies had it 50% resist meant half damage, not 100% or 0%.

Some of the later Wizardry games added bosses, and there doing decent single target mattered. Of course some of them also had some... amusing oversights. Did you know the Beast of 1,000 Eyes can just be instant killed if you grind enough levels then use the lights spells or a beheading ability?

 

[aweigh]

wellp, i reached b6f proper. i assume starfish meant to model the pits of hell of but it looks like gaping vaginall hallways heh

got party wiped by astronomically way over my level demons... hmmmmmm..... hey, is it worth using a summoner? i have a robe with me that will change the wearer into summoner class, and i keep passing by a ton of summoning pentagrams.

 

[Dorarnae]

wellp, i reached b6f proper. i assume starfish meant to model the pits of hell of but it looks like gaping vaginall hallways heh

got party wiped by astronomically way over my level demons... hmmmmmm..... hey, is it worth using a summoner? i have a robe with me that will change the wearer into summoner class, and i keep passing by a ton of summoning pentagrams.

summoner was quite nice in the first empire game, don't know for the second game. I guess why not if you already have all your spell and ready to class change.

there are game like wizardry xth, where they really suck hard. I didn't like them in genration xth either.

 

[aweigh]

the way summoning works in empire is good; in each dungeon there are pentagram upgrades that can give you new summons, wiz 4-style.

i never liked the pokemon-style in elminage, which is why i never use summoners there.

fun fact: from the castle entrace ladder in b1f, you can malor yourself down using coordinates o, o, b4f and you'll land in the southern part of b5f :D

you know, speaking of malor when i was playing through Wiz 5 i would sometimes teleport myself into areas of land that weren't part of the dungeon proper. i always assumed if you did it wrong it was always death by wall, but apparently they made some land masses in all the maps that are just there for you to warp to and nothing else

 

[Dorarnae]

It's funny because usually these games become AoE spam fest with Mage spells. Dark Spire is a real big example. If every single one of your characters were not half Mage you were Doing It Wrong, just because single target fights were just not a thing, there were always several groups of enemies and potentially 4x9 groups. It also helped magic resist was non binary vs nukes, so while enemies had it 50% resist meant half damage, not 100% or 0%.

Some of the later Wizardry games added bosses, and there doing decent single target mattered. Of course some of them also had some... amusing oversights. Did you know the Beast of 1,000 Eyes can just be instant killed if you grind enough levels then use the lights spells or a beheading ability?

yeah mage spell in The dark spire were really good. In wizardry asterisk you also want tiltoray with everyone in your party, but eventually(post game) the monster group are a lot stronger and smaller.

 

[aweigh]

wiz 5 also devolves into non stop tiltowaits due simple to the sheer size of the enemy hordes. i remember my party was 3 sams, 2 lords and 1 ninja. tiltowaits followed by mabarikos all day heh

 

[Dorarnae]

I didn't mind how you get your pet with summoner in elminage(and some are a bit OP) but was a bit annoyed that monster didn't keep all their skill when you make them adventurer. considering they can't wear the innocent equipment, can't class change them or they lose all their stat... and they can't have any blessing I think, I didn't see the point of that skill...

 

[aweigh]

oh god, i couldn't help myself, i went and looked at a map of the final floor of the post-game dungeon (after the castle).

the final floor of the final post game dungeon is a huge 20x20 dark zone, and the final uber post-game boss is a fixed encounter somewhere in it. you have to walk through the entire 20x20 grid til u find it, and the random encounters consist of the previous 3 top uber-bosses lolol

"Is the last of the map. First yourself cheers for good work ... you have created a map image so far!" - the website this is from

well on the plus side it does make the castle b6f where i'm stuck right now seem super easy and doable by comparison.

edit: btw, the final post-game boss, the dragon reiburesu i'm pretty certain is an homage to the top dog of the gods of wizardry, the dragon l'kbreth, which himself is an tribute to the richard garriott's akalabeth.

here's reiburesu