Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[logrus]

I must admit that the character development in Wiz8 is probably my favourite one among the cRPGs.
I like the aspect of improving skills as you use them, but still I'm mentally bound to XP-based levelling so it makes Wiz8 a perfect combination to me. Levelling purely by improving skills like in TES games is not as fun - simply because if you want to max the benefits of levelling (I could not resist that) you have to track every skill-up (I used XLS file which calculated the modifiers every time I updated it with the skill advance) and do the stupid things like jumping up and down a hill for a few minutes just to get the best modifier for strength, bleh. Granting perks when you rich 100 in the attributes is also a great bouns. Only thing I'd like to add are some starting background perks.

Turn-based combat (with the speed-up fix) is not tedious at all and one of the best level-scalling (or better say up-scalling) I've seen keeps them interesting even on high levels. I played a couple of times with different parites but my favourite party is: Samurai, Valkyrie, Fighter, Bard, Gadgeteer, Bishop. After the first walkthrough I tend to avoid recruiting NPC except the RFS-81. Tried the solo once Ninja Faerie too, but when I got a few level-ups and my skills where soooo low compared to what I needed to fight rapidly up-scaled monstrocities that I gave up. Maybe with some power-training skills it's doable, I'm not so good to beat the game just playing it the proper way.

 

[Mastermind]

lol. in morrowind you can just drain your skills and train for free. I'm a level 60+ ubermensch neanderthal with 100 in everything before I leave balmora.

 

[DraQ]

Lol, my ironman party (lvl10-11) got raped hard on the bridge to Marten's Bluff, only surviving with moderate losses (2 dead, the rest severely mauled) thanks to courageously turning tail and running like a bunch of sissies, complete with wetting their pants and crying. I encountered a bunch of deathsting apuses, so I buffed myself to standard level, spawned some pwetty lights, threw some standard debuffs and approached cautiously, but overall confidently - "CHAAARGE!".
Then someone got paralyzed and someone else poisoned - "ok not a big deal, will cure and proceed" - while a bunch of mauligators emerging from underneath the bridge... - "ok, shit's getting interesting, better find some defensive spo..." - ...and starting to maul everyone involved.

Once, twice, thrice, then again and again, all in single turn and per single reptile.

MULTIFANGED CROCS HITTING MONK AND BARD OH GOD ITZ HELL

"RUN AWAY! RUN AWAAAYYYY!!!".


Two resurrection powders, a magical healing and a long, but probably not very restful (everyone probably still rather scale-shocked) night later I approached much, much more carefully, drinking doublemans, throwing bombs, debuffs (insanity mostly) and dancing around enemies like crazy, trying to shield myself from one enemies with the others and cursing some greater seekers joining the fun, I emerged victorious earning over 40k XP - about 4x more than any fight this party got itself into.


Oh, and my developing, but still a bit underpowered 4-school Dracon (mostly due to lag in INT and PIE development at the beginning - 15 penalty points don't pay themselves) just bought some books and received major upgrade in his AoE and disabling capabilities - muahahaha noxious fumes.

Finished my almost iron man game (I reloaded only once). That game is really good, no two ways about it. The ending (Ascension peak and Cosmic circle) is pretty bland and disappointing, not to say shitty, though. The "bosses" of Ascension peak, for instance, are cakewalk by the time you get there. They were all easily K.Oed/Paralyzed/Blinded and barely touched me. Plus, enlarged sprites pretending to be giants don't cut it.
Still, many great games endings are disappointing and the rest is really good. Will replay for the Nth time.

Levelling purely by improving skills like in TES games is not as fun - simply because if you want to max the benefits of levelling (I could not resist that) you have to track every skill-up (I used XLS file which calculated the modifiers every time I updated it with the skill advance) and do the stupid things like jumping up and down a hill for a few minutes just to get the best modifier for strength, bleh.

That's only because TES lacks even the most obvious anti-grind measures. Also, making something like athletics or accrobatics skills in game where everyone will use those skills and where they can have no success checks is a horrible, horrible idea.

lol. in morrowind you can just drain your skills and train for free. I'm a level 60+ ubermensch neanderthal with 100 in everything before I leave balmora.

Yeah, but that's only because you're a complete faggot incapable of self control.

 

[Mastermind]

lol. in morrowind you can just drain your skills and train for free. I'm a level 60+ ubermensch neanderthal with 100 in everything before I leave balmora.

Yeah, but that's only because you're a complete faggot incapable of larping.

 

[DraQ]

lol. in morrowind you can just drain your skills and train for free. I'm a level 60+ ubermensch neanderthal with 100 in everything before I leave balmora.

Yeah, but that's only because you're a complete faggot thinking that not stealing candies from orphans is larping.

 

[Mastermind]

butthurt detected

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Hey, I steal Orphans in real life.
Leave me out of this argument.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

People who hop on place, run around like headless chickens or cast the same spell 50 times in a row to get 100 in skills give direct experience a bad name but the system is good. Just like the social care system, it's good, no matter how many cretins abuse it.

Having your skills progressing naturally in Wiz8 or Daggerfall is a very rewarding experience without overdoing it. No need to grind there. And to those who can't help themselves, at least get some satisfaction out of it (Mondblut ) and don't ask for the removal or toning down of the whole system. I don't want to see the right to use my dick to pee where I want removed and replaced by a robot nurse because some people can't help wetting themselves and then crying over it.

 

[logrus]

lol. in morrowind you can just drain your skills and train for free. I'm a level 60+ ubermensch neanderthal with 100 in everything before I leave balmora.

Personally, I tend to avoid grinding to rificulusly high level at the beginning and prefer to have fun with the game and developing my char while actually playing. On the other hand in Morrowind/Oblivion I could not resist buying skills I do not need from trainers or jumping up'n'down the hill just to get x5 modifiers when I already had 9/10 increases in major skills.

Lol, my ironman party (lvl10-11) got raped hard on the bridge to Marten's Bluff, ...

Ha, debuffs in Wiz8 are sometimes painful but it's nothing compared to yours berserker dracon fighter getting charmed and one-shooting both your bishop and alchemist in one turn

Levelling purely by improving skills like in TES games is not as fun - simply because if you want to max the benefits of levelling (I could not resist that) you have to track every skill-up (I used XLS file which calculated the modifiers every time I updated it with the skill advance) and do the stupid things like jumping up and down a hill for a few minutes just to get the best modifier for strength, bleh.

That's only because TES lacks even the most obvious anti-grind measures. Also, making something like athletics or accrobatics skills in game where everyone will use those skills and where they can have no success checks is a horrible, horrible idea.

Indeed, TES is completly open to grinding and game-breaking by abusing crafting. Seriously I don't get people that craft weapons able to deal damage equal to ten times end-boss HP in just one hit or power-train their toon to level cap in starting dungeon. I still don't understand why in Skyrim some of the spells are grind protected (casting +armor spells upgrades skill only if it's casted in combat) while you can cast soul trap indefinetely on dead body and build the skill that way...
Having lot of different skills in RPGs is fun, but sometimes game designers go a bit to far - as with the skills you mention in Morroeind.

 

[DraQ]

People who hop on place, run around like headless chickens or cast the same spell 50 times in a row to get 100 in skills give direct experience a bad name but the system is good. Just like the social care system, it's good, no matter how many cretins abuse it.

Having your skills progressing naturally in Wiz8 or Daggerfall is a very rewarding experience without overdoing it. No need to grind there. And to those who can't help themselves, at least get some satisfaction out of it (Mondblut ) and don't ask for the removal or toning down of the whole system. I don't want to see the right to use my dick to pee where I want removed and replaced by a robot nurse because some people can't help wetting themselves and then crying over it.

That's true, but there are some obvious, and, at the same time, realistic anti-grind measures. For example, if you scale skill experience with improbability of the outcome (1 - probability of what you got) you both implement logical, simulationist learning restriction (obvious, predictable outcome teaches you nothing) in an almost information theoretic manner (it's a base 2 logarithm short of entropy) and prevent people from leveling their long blade skill to over nine thousand by poking mudcrabs with a sword (advantage in terms of game balance).

Personally, I tend to avoid grinding to rificulusly high level at the beginning and prefer to have fun with the game and developing my char while actually playing. On the other hand in Morrowind/Oblivion I could not resist buying skills I do not need from trainers or jumping up'n'down the hill just to get x5 modifiers when I already had 9/10 increases in major skills.

I'd have loved it if trainers only raised the cap on the skill (master trainers to 100), which would then have to be trained the hard way.

Morrowind needed some money sink, and it would mitigate buying levels.

Indeed, TES is completly open to grinding and game-breaking by abusing crafting. Seriously I don't get people that craft weapons able to deal damage equal to ten times end-boss HP in just one hit or power-train their toon to level cap in starting dungeon. I still don't understand why in Skyrim some of the spells are grind protected (casting +armor spells upgrades skill only if it's casted in combat) while you can cast soul trap indefinetely on dead body and build the skill that way...
Having lot of different skills in RPGs is fun, but sometimes game designers go a bit to far - as with the skills you mention in Morroeind.

I'd have just integrated Ath and Acr aspects into speed (duh), agility (jumping) and endurance (less encumbrance penalties to stamina burn rate).

 

[octavius]

One thing that irritates the fuck out of me is that my character can't hit those fucking Munk Ninjas or Mad Warders, despite 100% weapon skill, max Bless and Max Enchant Weapon, if they are hit by one Blinding Flash spell. In the meantime half the party's actions (including wasting lots of mana on trying to Silence the fuckers or Cure the blindness) fail while the fuckers keep spamming my party with Blinding Flash, Sleep, Itching Skin, Confuse, Draining Cloud etc making the whole ordeal an uphill struggle against fuckers with unlimited (?) mana.

And funnily enough my own blinded characters who can't hit any of the enemies have no problems whatsoever hitting their own party members if bewildered.

BTW, playing without imported characters wielding Muramasa Blade, Bushido Blade and Meander's Lance is extremely frustrating since they can't kill spell spamming enemies fast enough, and I can't imagine progressing very far in the game with mundane weapons without lots of grinding.

 

[octavius]

Hmm...Munk Ninjas can be Silenced and their spells fail? Ninjas use Alchemy, so they should not be able to be silenced. I still remember they rude shock when those silenced Drow Rangers in Wiz 6 carpet bombed my party...
Oh well, just as well that at least one of the quirks of the game is working to my advantage.

 

[octavius]

Let me guess...the five flowers (Rosis, Plumac, Lione, Mythia and heavenly Dahlia) Master Xheng wants me to collect are the good Witch and her four jealous sisters?

I restarted the game to have better characters and equipment, and I've noticed quite a diffent "dynamics" in the second game. Even though I waste less time resting in the second game, other parties have already found two of the maps, while in the first game they had found none by the time I quit ( Lost Temple due to the Disease spreading Munks, who of course never showed up in my curreny game when I have the Cure Disease spell.)

In my current game the Lost Temple was much easier, but I arrived too late for the Crypt Map. Rumour has it that Ratsputin has it. It really irks me that he managed to escape after I had down about 75 damage to him when we faced him in Munkharama. Hopefully there will be a next time.
EDIT: I did a Mindread on Prof Wunderland and it turns out it's Mick the Pick who holds the Crypt map.
In my first game I also killed Wunderland and Ratsputin early in the game, so maybe less "actors" in the game means less competetion?

BTW, can NPCs kill each other? I got one report about one NPC defeating another.

 

[mondblut]

They can, I am pretty sure of it.

 

[kmonster]

I haven't played it since it was published, I remember not finishing it, it was hard as nails, just like W8 (which I didn't finish neither)but really interesting also. I should really give it a go again. I hate rolling new characters but I remember that you had a pre-rolled party. I remember hitting an impossibly hard mark. Is it good without powergaming? Or does the game becomes really too hard with these guys? It seemed to me that it was the case, well I didn't multi-class (never played D&D so for me multi-class is a mathematical burden), it's perhaps because of that that I couldn't get anywhere past the midway point.

You don't need any class changes in W7 order to succeed. (The official cluebook gives the impression that the writers didn't even know that you can change classes.) You just have to grind enough levels by fighting respawning monsters until you're immune to everything they do and they vulnerable. It's not difficult at all, only boring. But spending eternities rolling your characters and reloading level ups to get the stats needed for class switching instead is boring too, especially since you even have to grind in the final class so your special abilities work while the monsters' don't.

(Yes I know, heresy, but really: in general when the game provides a pre-rolled party, I go with it). That's why even if I bought Icewind Dale's GOG version, having only played through half of the pirated version, hum hum (I was poor at the time), I'm just too lazy to roll characters and I haven't started it yet.

You don't have to roll characters in IWD, there 8 pregenerated characters for importing, select 6 of them and start your game.

 

[octavius]

You don't need any class changes in W7 order to succeed. (The official cluebook gives the impression that the writers didn't even know that you can change classes.) You just have to grind enough levels by fighting respawning monsters until you're immune to everything they do and they vulnerable. It's not difficult at all, only boring. But spending eternities rolling your characters and reloading level ups to get the stats needed for class switching instead is boring too, especially since you even have to grind in the final class so your special abilities work while the monsters' don't.

You don't need eternities rolling characters. In fact, you can usually get a character with 18 bonus points in a few minutes in Wiz 6. Unless you aim for higher than 18 it may take an eternity, though.
It sure beats weeks of grinding...

I don't do any save scrumming, and in my current game four of six characters have now reached their final class with 80-100 points in their magic skills, as well as decent Kirijutsu and decent to max Ninjutsu for most of the characters.

Changing classes is the only way I know to to quickly gain non-weapon skills. It's a bit annoying getting Power Strike when all characters are lvl 10+ and be stuck with a skill less than 10 for the rest of the game, for example.

Wiz 7 throws so many enemies spamming spells and nasty stuff at you, and make you waste so bloody much mana on healing, curing, Divine Trap and ID'ing items, that I have no qualms about using any trick I can short of cheating, to avoid mindless grinding. If the game requires grinding to complete, then that is a design flaw almost as bad as Oblivion's level scaling.

If you could spend your skill points freely, like in Wiz 6, it wouldn't be so bad, but when you only get about 5 skills points to spend on magic skills per level it takes ages to learn the higher level spells.

 

[Mackerel]

I beat it as a teenager without switching classes and without grinding, running is a very useful tactic. I was guilty of spending hours rolling characters though.

 

[DraQ]

Used my first picks apart from two starting ones on my 4-schooler Dracon - toxic cloud and summon elemental - not waiting until Rapax Castle before getting my quintessential crowd control spell and having summonable MBT can also be a crucial for survival. Obtained some books too, finally getting stuff like freeze flash or web. Completed magical protections with both shields and learned superman as well to be able to systematically buff the party during hard encounters. Dude is quite powerful now, though still no powercast - OTOH he's quite well rounded for a bishop and not as fragile as he would be as some Faerie or other Elf.



Got Bushido Blade for my Faerie samurai too, so he finally stopped sucking.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, has anyone ever managed to create a gimped party?

 

[Fowyr]

Let me guess...the five flowers (Rosis, Plumac, Lione, Mythia and heavenly Dahlia) Master Xheng wants me to collect are the good Witch and her four jealous sisters?

Oh wow, never thought about it. I think they are just regular mountain flowers, and I remember encounters with some witches...

 

[octavius]

I beat it as a teenager without switching classes and without grinding, running is a very useful tactic.

That's quite impressive.
Did you use imported characters?
Fountains or resting?
And didn't running just make things even more difficult since you get less XP?

 

[Kashrlyyk]

So, has anyone ever managed to create a gimped party?

What is a "gimped party" in Wizardry 8?? A party that can not win even if you play to the best of your abilities??

 

[Black]

So, has anyone ever managed to create a gimped party?

What is a "gimped party" in Wizardry 8?? A party that can not win even if you play to the best of your abilities??

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Dude, WTF?
Where the fuck did you find that shit?


Brilliant!

 

[DraQ]

Oh, one superbly amusing thing:

Recently, after talking with Z'Ant and getting hefty amount of XPs my game went slightly bonkers. Vi (multiclassed to Fighter) wanted to comment about her level up, but by the time she managed to I tried to exit conversation. She must have tried to say goodbye and her level up thing simultaneously, and as a result game stuttered, complained several times about Vi missing the quote, then made her saying her (unused) text for after beating the Dark Savant. Then the conversation looped and couldn't be exited, so I had to kill the process and reload.


(That's what I call " The Brazilian Slaughter ".)