Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[iZerw]

As I know, fighters gain an additional attack every 3 levels. So it's better to start the game with mere fighters then switch them to the prestige classes after 9 or 12 level.

 

[octavius]

if I can't be bothered to roll a Ninja on character creation.

How the hell do you roll a Ninja on character creation? 28 bonus points, which is by far the most I've seen, is not even enough to create a Lord.

 

[Gragt]

The usefulness of a Thief is debatable. Other party members can attempt to identify a trap, and then Calfo makes it even easier. After that you can decide if you want to eat the trap or not—you can actually try to have someone disarm him with high agility and it might just work. The change you describe were introduced mainly in Wizardry 5, after D.W. Bradley came onboard, and also gave them bows to actually do something from the back; I guess it was easy to add those in the console versions. From what I've read many decide to forget thieves and simply make another warrior to turn into a ninja later. Also the ninja is no substitute for a thief when it comes to disarming traps and will likely have the same chances of success as other non-thief characters.

 

[octavius]

The usefulness of a Thief is debatable. Other party members can attempt to identify a trap, and then Calfo makes it even easier. After that you can decide if you want to eat the trap or not—you can actually try to have someone disarm him with high agility and it might just work.

I have considered it, but it will just make the game even slower, having to return to the surface to replenish the Calfo spells and cure the poisoning from the innumerable Poison Needle traps. And I rarely need three spell casters in the back ranks. Not yet, anyway.

 

[octavius]

crpgaddict on Wiz 1: "If you can get by this encounter [with a party consisting of two high-level fighters, two high-level mages, two high-level priests, and one high-level ninja on lvl 4], your money woes are over, because one of your slain foes carries a "Ring of DEATH!" (yes, the exclamation point is part of its name) which sells for 250,000 gold."

But of course the Ring of Death! that my party found was Cursed and I can't sell it. The game keeps trolling me.
But so far I've managed to avoid any party deaths. Now the question is, should I do another run against that party and hope to find an uncursed Ring of Death!? First time I was lucky and surprised them, and also avoided being killed by that Ninja (he did a whopping 47 damage against one of my Samurais, though).

 

[octavius]

There's no way to cure level drain in Wiz 1?!? That's brutal...
My party has now reached lvl 6 of the Maze. Still no party deaths (yay!), still no un-Paralyze spell (but in the face of level draining that's now trivial), and finally my Priest got the Big Shield spell. I can't think of another game where AC is so vital (except maybe Bard's Tale 1+2 where it also functioned as THAC0).
Except for losing a Bishop, the worst thing's that happened is one of my Samurais getting level drained. Does level draining also lower stats? If not, it could possibly be a way of getting good enough stats to get a Lord or Samurai, by letting a lvl 2 character repeatedly be drained and then level him up again.

 

[DemonKing]

How the hell do you roll a Ninja on character creation? 28 bonus points, which is by far the most I've seen, is not even enough to create a Lord.

I seem to remember being able to create a Ninja at level 1 after getting 27 bonus points (although I'll admit I could be mistaken as that was almost 30 years ago on an Apple II...). Just shove the points around a bit and see what comes up.

Never did find out what the Ring of DEATH! did - I almost always sold it for the 250,000 windfall.

 

[DraQ]

Never did find out what the Ring of DEATH! did - I almost always sold it for the 250,000 windfall.

I just realized exactly how immensely game-fucking-breaking the broken economy in most cRPGs is, where you never even need to consider an option of selling something powerful, unique and expensive to get something you truly need. In most games such a decision is an indisputable net loss because you lose something irreplaceable for generic resource you could get with more grindan anyway.

 

[octavius]

And so I had my first party death in Wiz 1...I had almost finished lvl 6 of the Maze when I entered a room with both a Pit and an encounter. The Pit left my weakest guys almost dead (oh, the joys of getting 1 HP at level up 75% of the time), but I made a big mistake after killing the monsters. Instead of just Leaving the chest and get the hell out of that room, my Thief naturally had to do one of his rare fumbles and set off an Alarm trap. But exiting the chest screen set off the Pit once more, leaving only my Fighter alive to face a group of 5 Samurais. For the first time I hit the Run key on purpose. The other times I hit the Run key by mistake it always worked, but of course now that I really needed it to work it didn't.

 

[Jaesun]

EPIC CLUSTERFUCK™

 

[iZerw]

Does level draining also lower stats? If not, it could possibly be a way of getting good enough stats to get a Lord or Samurai, by letting a lvl 2 character repeatedly be drained and then level him up again.

When level drained your EXP remains, but the amount of EXP for a level-up will stay the same. With this tactics applied you'll need 1200 EXP for the second level, then 2105, 3677, 6477, 11363. For the 3 level it will be 19935 as it would be for the 6. But i don't know if levels matter that much in Wiz1. I think my Priest heals my party better then before, but maybe I just delude myself.

 

[octavius]

Found a nice site that explains excactly how the stats in Wiz 1-3 work.
Turned out the reason why my useless Priest got so few spells at level up was due to his low Piety score. I wish the manual had been somewhat more helpful in explaining these things.

I'm now building up a new party to try to rescue the remains of the old one. Grinding up levels goes quite quickly when not having to map, and now gaining all the spells as fast as possible my party is better prepared.
I'm gonna beat this game fair and square without save scumming.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I'm gonna beat this game fair and square without save scumming.

Go for it !

 

[TigerKnee]

Found a nice site that explains excactly how the stats in Wiz 1-3 work.

I think it's interesting how you basically only got advantages from stats if you were at the extreme ends. So Fighters with STR 6-15 basically fight at the same power, though I suppose the later is at a higher chance of finally hitting a "break point" when leveling to give him an advantage.

Hmm, knowing this, I guess I would go for rolling stats that are extreme in each department rather than try for jack for all trade characters if it wasn't for multi-classing reqs.

 

[octavius]

My first party I aimed for rather even stats, hoping to be able to qualify for Lord or Ninja class faster. But with the stats decreasing at level up I'm starting to think that is impossible to be able to class change without save scumming.
My second party is more min-maxed and the stats seem to gravitate towards the extremes.

 

[octavius]

Heh, I think I may have grinded my second party too much; the boss fight in the Monster Allocation Center was a breeze and only lasted two rounds this time. And now my money worries should be over since I found a Ring of Death that was not doubly cursed and sold it for 250,000 gold. And after several levels up gaining only 1 HP my Priest now got a whopping 27 HP!?

 

[Gragt]

Yeah, I noticed things tend to average out in the end, so if you had very few gains at the start the game would reward you at some point with a big increase … maybe.

 

[octavius]

So playing my second party in Wiz 1 I've noticed the following:

There's a huge area on lvl 4 only accessible by the Teleporter spell, which in my case was the result of setting off a Teleporter trap. Fortunately there was a one way door out. I wonder if there are any areas with no way out? That would be extremely nasty, and frankly not very surprising.

On lvl 5 there seems to be a trigger somewhere that makes the whole level an anti-magic zone. I at first thought only parts of the level was anti-magic, since magic worked at the start of the level. Quite nasty of you're a long way from the stair or elevator with poisoned or badly wounded characters...

The whole level you are currently on seems to be reset if you trigger a Teleporter trap. I think the same happens if you trigger an Alarm trap.

 

[Jim Cojones]

The game doesn't simply roll one die to determine how many bonus hit points do you get on level up. Instead every time you level up it rolls as many dice as it would be appropriate for the new character level. If the sum of all the rolls and, if applicable, bonuses form condition is higher than your current max HP, it becomes your new maximum. Otherwise you only only get 1 additional hit point. It's a pretty clever system that discourages save scumming for maximum hit points gain and also guarantees that you will eventually build a decent hp pool. IIRC Gold Box games used that algorithm too.

 

[octavius]

The game doesn't simply roll one die to determine how many bonus hit points do you get on level up. Instead every time you level up it rolls as many dice as it would be appropriate for the new character level. If the sum of all the rolls and, if applicable, bonuses form condition is higher than your current max HP, it becomes your new maximum. Otherwise you only only get 1 additional hit point. It's a pretty clever system that discourages save scumming for maximum hit points gain and also guarantees that you will eventually build a decent hp pool. IIRC Gold Box games used that algorithm too.

Ah, that makes sense. My Mage is lvl 10, but has only 19 HP (his Vitaly is currently 5, but it was as low as 3 once), so now it's about bloody time for that bonus.
I don't think the Gold Box games use the same algorithm, though, since you never get more than D10 + CON bonus when leveling a Fighter, for example. But the dice seem be loaded in the players' favour, at least in the games following Pool of Radiance, and definitely in FRUA (although the inverse seems to be true for most other dice rolls).

 

[TigerKnee]

That algorithm was used in Dark Spire for the DS too.

 

[octavius]

That's one pious individual. Maybe he'll become a Lord after all, if he's lucky?

 

[Sranchammer]

Why am I pressured into making an multiracial party?

 

[iZerw]

I was grinding on the 10th floor when I opened a chest with a teleporter trap and got lost, then been teleported again and again until I found Werdna Headquarters. Werdna was accompanied by a vampire lord and a pack of 3 vampires. I cast Zilwan on the lord, then exterminated vampires with spells of mass-damage. After Werdna's madalto I was left only with my fighters and priest. So, basically the fighters were punching him in his face until he dropped dead while the priest was healing them.
P.S. You can continue to grind on 10th floor after you have finished the game. And don't forget to export your characters (edge of town -> utilities -> move) to the next scenario!

 

[octavius]

Too bad you can't purposefully switch positions in combat in Wiz 1, or have individual characters Run. Just had an epic fight against 10 Major Daimos and 11 High Priests, and due to enemy Sleep spells my Mage ended up in the front line with only 3 HP left, so I was forced to Run even though I had whittled the opposition down to 3 wounded enemies. Can't risk the Life spell on a character with only 5 Vitality...