Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[octavius]

From the ultimate wizardry archives?

Yes, that was the name.

 

[Watser]

Okey fuck this. Tried several different downloads with the same outcome. Tried making a party in wiz1 using a freshly downloaded wiz1.dsk file and transfering it to another fresh wiz2.dsk but to no avail.

According to post #10 in this thread http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=33149 it is possible to hex-edit the 320kb file to merge the data with the save.dsk file from the archives version. However I have zero experience using a hex editor.

 

[aweigh]

dude, jesus christ just download a pc-98 emulator and play wiz 1-5 in the best possible high-resolution font and easy-as-pie party transferring.

japanese ports of the originals are the best and transfer flawlessly and feature the highest resolution.

 

[Watser]

Nah I'll have some fun getting this to work and then continue with the wizardry archives version rather than start over.

 

[aweigh]

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Is there any mod that removes level scaling in Wiz8?

 

[Lacrymas]

That's the tragedy of Wiz8 - level scaling and shit encounter design (also grinding). If you have level scaling in an RPG you are already missing the entire point and the whole game becomes a meaningless trudge through the motions. It's a static and unchanging bubble which goes nowhere. tells us nothing and wastes our time.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Yeah, after fast combat of Wiz6/Wiz7, 8th feels like a slog even with fast-animation patch. Add level scaling and it becames unbearable after a while. I'd love to finish whole trilogy but Wiz8 in current shape is beyond my nerves. No level scaling mod plz!!! It is even possible that such mod haven't been created yet?

 

[Essegi]

Being incredibly bored and waiting for updates for rpgs i own i guess it's time for Wiz8 since i feel that before i die i must play at least a game from this series.
Never played a Wizardry before (nor much TB blobbers, i remember Paper Sorcerer and Frayed Knights). Ok ok i know i should start from 6, enjoy 7 and finish with 8, i just don't have enough patience to deal with sound bug of 6 and lenght of 7. Also i've heard that 8 has a nice interface. But that's not the point.

So
1) Mods for a first play: just Wizfast? Or there's something else that can improve the game without changing mechanics?
I've seen that ingame without mod i can set enemies at 5x speed, is that enough? To me slow animation is a concern...

2) being my first play i wanna a standard and streamlined party, probably i won't multiclass. I want to keep it simple stupid as much as possible avoiding to make battles harder for a wrong composition.

Something like that:

Warrior (because kicks major ass and i like weapon experts, even if it falls a bit on late game)
Valkyrie (sounds like a damg good class)
Ranger (maybe not the strongest but if helps searching smoothing gameplay it's a big plus)
Gadgeteer (become strong late game and can pick locks, seems that it suck on early game tho)
Mage
Priest

I'm not really convinced about last 2... I've heard that bishop can be better than mage but a bit harder to play...
I've not heard great things about priest and playng defensively... And i've read that can be swapped for bard for still good haling but maybe more efficence.
But priest+mage is the most classic.

So... The above party (i'll check wich races are ok with witch classes) is balanced and viable?
If i swap last 2 with bishop and bard is much better?
I'm a bit sad that i have no room for a thief, i've read that it's better to make it a damage dealer with dual daggers or sword rather than a skillmonkey (but i guess that fighter and valkyrie are better), dunno if can make it a good damage dealer with lockpicking...
I've not taken into account that i'll find some recruitbale pcs... I just like to buld an autonomous party.

PS: i know that party topic has been debated much and that there isn't an optimal one... Just i still can't decide...

 

[aweigh]

 

[janior]

Celerity faerie

 

[aweigh]

 

[Whipping Post]

Something like that:

Warrior (because kicks major ass and i like weapon experts, even if it falls a bit on late game)
Valkyrie (sounds like a damg good class)
Ranger (maybe not the strongest but if helps searching smoothing gameplay it's a big plus)
Gadgeteer (become strong late game and can pick locks, seems that it suck on early game tho)
Mage
Priest

So... The above party (i'll check wich races are ok with witch classes) is balanced and viable?

You could multiclass with the mage/priest; flip the mage to a samurai at level two and the priest to a lord at level two. Keep these guys at the center of your formation, give them both points in staff/wands and have them casting spells in between extended-range attacks with the staves.

Samurai and Lords can equip some of the most powerful staves; obviously they'll be a little weaker in the spells department compared to pure casters, but regular attacks outshine magical attacks more and more as the game progresses. This way your casters are less squishy, more versatile, have strong regular attacks by late-game, and can still cast all of the spells a mage or priest can.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Mages don't need no sticks to be awesoe, especially mid-to-end game. Specialized casters can deal so much damage/buffs/debuffs and not run out of spells the entire combat (unless it's some super huge one) even without using mana potions by mid game, that i really can't see the point of making a hybrid, who is half assed at everything. I could only understand that with small party or solo run, but then it's just better to go with bishop anyway.
Have to admit i never liked the idea of jack-of-all trades and hybrids in any rpg in general for some reason.

 

[Whipping Post]

Mages don't need no sticks to be awesoe, especially mid-to-end game. Specialized casters can deal so much damage/buffs/debuffs and not run out of spells the entire combat (unless it's some super huge one) even without using mana potions by mid game, that i really can't see the point of making a hybrid, who is half assed at everything. I could only understand that with small party or solo run, but then it's just better to go with bishop anyway.
Have to admit i never liked the idea of jack-of-all trades and hybrids in any rpg in general for some reason.

The mage is fragile, so a constant liability. Damage-dealing magic falls behind regular attacks by mid-game; status affecting and party buffing spells are where its at in Wiz8 and you don't need a specialized caster to do those things .

Starting as a mage gives a boost to Wizardry and Realm skills and makes spells available from the beginning. Flipping to Samurai will let you land more kills with speed and crits than a pure mage could with spells, a staff/wands samurai will rarely die in combat, and can still cast all the spells you need for all your buffs and then some.

The priest doesn't need to be casting all the time, especially if you have valkyries, so you might as well flip it to a lord and have extra extended range attacks when you're not casting. Like the samurai, a staff/wands lord in the center of the formation will rarely die in combat.

 

[Malignant Manor]

don't have enough patience to deal with sound bug of 6

There has been a fix for audio popping for a long time. Here is a link to a Wizardry 6 and 7 Automap Mod DOSBox build that fixes audio popping and as the name implies, has an optional automap for both games.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Guess it's a matter of taste, because the fragility of pure mages for me is far outweighted by their sorcerous badassery, which develops way faster, when focusing on it sharply instead of scattering points and praxis in a bunch different skills and attributes among many different areas, while becoming master of none. Buffing/debuffing effectiveness is just as reliant on realm skills and intelligence/piety as are damage spells so i don't get the ''can still cast all the spells you need''. Yes, you can, but at lower rate of effectiveness, than if you only ever invest in casting. Defending casters is only a bit problematic at the very beginning of the game. And they become a lot more unassailable for enemy magic than melee guys thanks to high realm skills, so that's a trade.

 

[metalwarrionslesdigo]

Is true that the most difficult Wizardry is the IV, or there is another Wizardry more difficult than IV ?

 

[Whipping Post]

If you're playing with hybrids, and scattering points in a bunch of different skills/attributes then you're doing it wrong; focus on three skills and two attributes to max out from the beginning. You become specialized in one area first, master it, then specialize in another.

A mage starts out with very high int at the beginning, and if you flip to samurai, you'll still have high enough intelligence to make a serviceable mage for the first half of the game without having to put another point into it. Intelligence will also help the samurai's close combat skill. You need to pour points into speed for more attacks, which casters need anyways for initiative. The realm skills you get from spamming magic which inevitably happens as you progress through the game; you'll be a little behind a pure mage in your skills, but it's worth it if you prefer the samurai's insta-kills to having extra damage spells, which I do.

 

[aweigh]

mages are completely and utterly useless in hard-core Wiz meta-gaming.

what should your end party ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS be when playing Wiz 1 - 5??

it should be: Lord, Lord, Ninja, Samurai, Ninja, Bishop.

- The two lords started out as human mages with MONSTER rolls because otherwise they would never make Lord

- the front-row Ninja is beheading peeps left and right like they used to be able to do before Bradley ruined everything; oh yeah he started out as a front-row thief in Wiz 1-4 and a back row thief in Wiz 5.

- The back row samurai is using one of the Samurai/valkyrie/lord-only SPEARS to get some DPS in from the back; and of course he started out as a Cleric first with a MODERATE bonus roll as the reqs are that high for sams.

- The back row ninja is completely naked and fighting with Infinite-Range due to being unequipped; he and his bro have higher (or rather, lower AC) than the lords and sammies because they're motherfucking ninjas baby, and it pays OFFFF to level them up. i.e. playing the game rewards you! -- he started out originally as a samurai so he's rocking the back row tiltowaits of course. this is strategic shit right here folks!! NOTE: naked ninjas can behead.

- the bisop is 100% completely and utterly useless and there is no reason to have him in a party other than to identify stuff while knee-deep in dungeon floors. he can contribute literally NOTHING worthwhile by end game as he learns spells so slowly that you can turn that thief into a ninja and those two mages into Lords before the fucking bishop ever even gets Tiltowait. This is by design of course as the brothers wanted the bishop to represent the ultimate meta-narrative about the party composition of the person playing this game: will he even realize that he's a completely useless cuck? and if he does will this player realize that he is there to make the traditional 6-man wizardry team in actuality a 5-man team; this is from wiz 3 and onwards they introduced the chances of identification failure producing negative statuses.

on the one hand the bishop's ability to identify on the go can create emergent gameplay scenarios where you're literally killing and looting and luckily finding stronger gear and ID'ing it right then and there and are able to continue killing and looting although the logistical situation and the micro-management of your limited inventory and limited number of spells (from everyone) is always weighing heavily on all of your decisions. on the other hand you can't help thinking that replacing him with a lord or a samura with a spear/tiltowaits/mabariko's from the back row would be extremely more benefial monster-killing wise. however the way the loot is designed in wiz 1-5 is so perfect that you will ALWAYS be hunting for that next fixed encounter just so you can go through the extremely tense bomb-defusal scenario and get a chance to play a virtual slot machine. having a bishop with you to ID the prize right there only doubles the loot-lust and heightens the euphoria of the adventuring and the conquest!

suddenly you start to realize that maybe the bishop isn't completely useless after all. he enriches the playing experiences in many ways that you had not considered before and if anything provides more options by eliminating them. you're such a hard core playing you know you don't NEED 6 effective party members; it suddenly makes you feel good that you know the underlying systems so well that the realization that you're actually using 5 chars and not 6 gives you a slight thrill. this party will never be maximally min-maxed! instead this party has a bishop.

in wiz 1-5 there is no reason to use mages/clerics. i mean... yes, of course one should use them they are AWESOME: and once they reach level 13 off they go into either sammurai or lord school! duh. with the availability of M-range melee weapons there is simply no logical reason to not have 5 warrior-casters. well 4 warrior-casters and 1 nina butt naked beheading people with his toes.

this is the biggest reason i dislike bradley so much... he made his absolute best effort at making everything possible to dimish the importance of hybridizng the classes: so much so he effectively made multi-classing/dual-classing completely useless and often detrimental to good power-gaming in wiz 7-8.

 

[TigerKnee]

Warrior (because kicks major ass and i like weapon experts, even if it falls a bit on late game)

Wiz 8 is actually the opposite of most CRPGs as far as Fighter/Caster balance is concerned - the non-Hybrid Fighter classes almost scale exponentially in how well they can slaughter monsters while casters mostly only shine for DD purposes when there's a ridiculously number of mobs (which sadly is pretty common in 8)

 

[aweigh]

the incredibly high amount of comompletely useless skills and badly integrated primary attributes definitely don't help any either. i like sammies in wiz 8 because all you need to know is: pump sense, critical skill and sword/katana (can't remember if thery're differentiated). unlike other classes who are similarly shallow such as the ranger (bow, something-or-other, eagle eye was it?) anyway unlike the ranger and the Lord (who is majorly gimped in wiz 7 and wiz 8) the samurai can be a total bad ass killing machine with good spells and excellent damage output and great crowd-control in the form of lightning strikes + instant kills. he's basically everything the ninja USED to be.

ninja's totally gimped in wiz 8 a horrible class. only saving grace is damage threshold bypass with ranged weapons but guess what folks? yep, only a SPECIAL SELECT FEW ranged weapons and with ultra limited ammo. though at least their new alchemy spell school makes up for it rite? go fuck yourself.

lords... ugh not even worth mentioning or talking about.

valkyries are fantastic in wiz 8 and probably the best designed and best thought out melee-caster in the game. zero weaknesses and can actually, unbelievably!, really DO pull off double duty healing and killing; unlike every other hybrid-class in wiz 8 which were all gutted. to make her even more awesome the excellent cheat death ability which seems like the cherry on top. and yet i bet no one would call valks OP right? they're not, btw. i'm ust saying they're PROBABLY the single best class in wiz 8. spears/spells/stats/good skill spread = there's no beating the valk.

now moving on to the ranger... meh. he's kind of what the ninja should have been? i think? with the instant kill from ranged thing but he's just not good enough and his stat spread is too broad to really be a great class. just give dat bow to a fighter and he'll do just as well if not downright better.

bards... ugh, fucking Bradley bards. you know guys that there's a specific and important reason no other games with bards who use instruments as magic spells can use them indefinitely right? i can't think of a more boring and lazy class design than the wiz 6-8 bard, i.e. the bradley bard. spam one of the instruments every round always no exceptions put all points into the music skill blah blah fuck that shit. fuck THAT SHIT FUCK IT. FUCK YER LUTE. in all other blobbers/crawlers musical instruments and the like always have a % chance to break on use. FOR GOOD FUCKING REASON.

fighters surprisingly are much better win wiz 8 than in previous wizardries. yes, i can admit that bradley did something well. fighters are actually interesting in wiz 8 and a draconian fighter going berserk and breathing on people is real great fun in the mid-game.

gadgeteers are... copy/paste everything i said about bards EXCEPT they have to wait slightly longer before getting their toys and unlike the bard are conceptually cooler and better designed. they can serve other functions than just playing with their toys as well, again, unlike the bard: they can replace completely a ranger for example. good class that could've been great.

priests are unbelievably fucked in wiz 8. pick a valk, a lord or a monk (are there monks still in wiz 8?) because unlike in real wizardry titles the wiz 8 priest is a feeble back row pedophile and can't do shit and worse: his spells are shit.

mages and bishops fare better than the priest though and bishops are actually the best they've ever been in wiz 8. of course there's no reason to make a mage instead of just making two bishops. in wiz 8 i mean.

 

[aweigh]

btw the last time i played wiz 8 i finished it on hard using: 2 samurais (one using bloodlust for hilarious 15x lightning strikes), two valkyries spearing it up behind the samurais and in the center a fighter using a bow and next to him cowwering in fear a faery bishop doing nothing other than buffing.

that party was 100% at both melee and ranged. when the enemy is far put the 1 sam who's not using bloodlust on a good bow, and also the same for the valks (i think i had them using slings for some reason i can't remember probably laziness) and the fighter obviously will always be on bow duty those fuckers will be dead halfway over to you. be sure to pick a good spot to back yourself into so that if they reach you the two samurais are in front activating lightning strikes + critical kills / behind them the two valkyries thrusting their spears over their heads and hitting the enemy and healing if needed and meanwhile the fighter behind-sandwiched by the two valks doing his best Legolas impression and the bishop on a macro casting magic screen / armor plate/ etc as needed.

if for whatever reason they break through fighter is draconian goes berserk dual wielding axes; the valks switch to sword and shield and the two samurais, well, keep hoping and hitting for those lightning strikes baby.

EDIT: actually the samurais switch to spears and go behind the valks who are taking the brunt now with sword and board, since those sammies will have been taking hits.

 

[kwanzabot]

 

[octavius]

Is true that the most difficult Wizardry is the IV, or there is another Wizardry more difficult than IV ?

IV is in a class of its own, but III has some really hard parts as well, like the beginning (thanks partly due to stats being capped at 15, and thus giving no bonuses) and the Priests of ng.