Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[Whisper]

For Wiz 7 I recommend sticking to single-class characters and going with races with balanced attribute spreads.

And i how i level magic skills, adding 3-5 each lvl up? I need around 98 for lvl 7 spells.

Also will this party be able to kill strongest bosses?


And what will happen if i take my time and competing parties get maps?

 

[Whisper]

How much is problem is NPC competiton at first place? Does it make me hurry during all game?

 

[aweigh]

w7 (and w8) use a super retarded system of raise by using and raise by points...

just read this:

http://home.pacific.net.au/~kitten/Wizardry7/

SELF IMPROVING SKILLS

Many skills, like Ninjitsu, are self improving. That is, the more you do them, the better they get. You may have noticed that Oratory, Music and Weapons skills improve with experience. It doesn't matter whether you're killing Boring Beetles or Black Dragons, the improvement is the same, which is a clue: it's much easier to survive Beetles, so follow this procedure:

1. Find a Fountain that restores Health, Stamina and Magic points.
   (I recommend the one in the starter dungeon just outside New City)
2. Drink from the Fountain
3. Save the game
4. Hold down the Left (or Right) Arrow Key. This will make you spin around on the spot.
5. Wait patiently for some monsters to turn up.
6. Hide in the shadows. (this practices your NINJITSU)
7. Use the Skills that you want to practice. For Oratory (the ability to cast spells), don't cast a level 7 Nuclear Blast, just keep casting Weaken, Slow, Sleep, Charm and so on at level 1, until you run out of Magic points, THEN kill them with weapons.
8. Repeat from Step 2 until you collapse from boredom.

(It ain't exciting, but by Satan's Left Nut, it's damned effective. I find that a few hours of this reduces me to a zombie, so I use an Insane friend to do it for me - a recommended technique!)

Ugh. Horrible game design. RPGs that use raise-by-using are the epitome of bad game design.

 

[Whisper]

What exactly Intelligence for?

I see Piety effect, but Intelligence - aside from getting bonus points at lvl up to academia skills

 

[aweigh]

yes, not only does it make you hurry, but the competing parties were shittily implemented and will constantly get shit they have no business, or means, of getting legitimately.

unlike my above post concerning skills/spells, I think idea of having competing parties is a GOOD FEATURE.

however, it was badly implemented and it sucks a lot of the fun from the game. BTW, the competing parties can become ridiculously OP eventually and very tedious to defeat in combat...

 

[aweigh]

Intelligence is tied to secondary skills, same way that for example raising dexterity can (marginally) raise dexterity-related skills (probably ninjitsu, but my memory fails me).

strength raises carrying capcaity, etc. Shit like that. Each primary attribute affects the secondary ones like speed, senses, etc. the tertiary attributes (weapon skills, ninjitsu, spells, etc) are affected by both primary AND secondary attributes.

Broadly speaking, though, INT regulates effectives of some of the spell schools, and PIE some of the other ones. seriously, just read a FAQ, man. Just don't look at dungeon maps or puzzle solutions; use the FAQs as a way to understand the mechanics.

It all sounds "complex" until you realize each class has a specific best race and that only a few of the attributes, both primary and secondary, are even worth bothering to raise.

all of the skills (tertiary attributes) can be raised by simply playing the game, etc. Game is a complete clusterfuck of bad design.

 

[octavius]

Also will this party be able to kill strongest bosses?

Why shouldn't it? After all the trash combats the game throws at you, you will eventually be able to face anything.
I killed the Monster of 1000 Eyes without doing any grinding. I did the smart thing, though, saving it for the return trip out of that dungeon.

And what will happen if i take my time and competing parties get maps?

You loot the maps from the corpses of their previous owners; you will eventually cross paths with all the other parties. It's possibly you can talk or trade to get them too, I don't remember.

 

[Whisper]

" INT regulates effectives of some of the spell schools"

how exactly?

PIE increases mana and its very noticable

 

[Whisper]

I killed the Monster of 1000 Eyes without doing any grinding. I did the smart thing, though, saving it for the return trip out of that dungeon.

No class changing?

 

[octavius]

I killed the Monster of 1000 Eyes without doing any grinding. I did the smart thing, though, saving it for the return trip out of that dungeon.

No class changing?

Some, but only to get those Magic skills. Class level is used in most combat calculations, so you need that to be high as well, which it won't be if class changing all the time.

 

[mmap]

Frankly, I'm starting to not have much fun. My goons do very little damage in melee; and if I use spells, I have to return to the fountain in the beginner dungeon after several battles, and then click millions of times to heal my party... I'm working my way towards Orkogre; another option is to go to Munkharama, but, I assume, it is full of munks, who will cast all kinds of nasty stuff (which implies even more healing).
Bane of the Cosmic Forge was A LOT faster paced, I was making good progress at all points in this game (well, except for dwarven mines which took forever, but that's because I didn't want to draw my own maps). Crusaders is something akin to a single player MMO, except the MMOs that I played didn't require the player to click dozens of time on magic fountains
I probably don't have what it takes to finish this one... How's Wizardry 8? I heard about the super slow combats, anything else?

 

[Whisper]

Frankly, I'm starting to not have much fun. My goons do very little damage in melee; and if I use spells, I have to return to the fountain in the beginner dungeon after several battles, and then click millions of times to heal my party... I'm working my way towards Orkogre; another option is to go to Munkharama, but, I assume, it is full of munks, who will cast all kinds of nasty stuff (which implies even more healing).
Bane of the Cosmic Forge was A LOT faster paced, I was making good progress at all points in this game (well, except for dwarven mines which took forever, but that's because I didn't want to draw my own maps). Crusaders is something akin to a single player MMO, except the MMOs that I played didn't require the player to click dozens of time on magic fountains
I probably don't have what it takes to finish this one... How's Wizardry 8? I heard about the super slow combats, anything else?

There are less combats and they are faster in W8 than in W7.

 

[octavius]

Wiz 7 suffers from HP sponge enemies and, unless you import artefact weapons from Wiz 6, weak weapons.

 

[Jason Liang]

This is why I recommend grinding until you've maxed out your magic and other skills like Ninjitsu, Legedermain and Skulduggery, so that you can travel far without being anchored to a fountain. I also never imported from Wiz 6 so that's probably another reason I recommend grinding/ class change.

You want to class change as quickly as possible so that you can level up as quickly as possible. Each time you level up you will gain skill points and each time you class change you should improve your character's hit rate, as long as you match your previous max character level.

How the system calculates hit rate is your character's hit rate will improve as long as you match or exceed your previous class level max. Say for example, you have an Elf Mage. At level 5 you class change her into a Priest. When you raise your Priest to levels 2-4, you won't increase your hit rate. But when you raise your Priest to 5, you will receive a hit rate increase. Then you immediately change her back to a Mage. When you hit level 5 Mage again, you will receive a hit rate increase again, and then you change her back to a Priest, etc... until you've maxed out both Spellbooks. But if you level up to 6, then you will have to level up to 6 to receive a new hit rate increase.

So as long as you can consistently get the attribute bonuses to class change, there is no reason to not class change once you've hit your level max (and that's easy with a simple basic loop like Elf Mage->Priest). Let's say you've class changed Mage->Priest five times each to level 5. So your character has now 25 levels of Mage and 25 levels of Priest for a fraction of the experience she would need to raise to Mage level 25. Not only that, but they will hit as if they were +10 levels (since you class changed 10 times). Now you change your characters to their "final" class and start playing the game for real. If you do this correctly, with a fountain, you'll only be about a day or so behind.

Again, this is best done in New City if you've found the secret fountain. You don't need to spin in place since you can keep summoning the Savant Guards automatically, fireball them to death and get tons of xp. Once you're out of magic, go back to the fountain to restore.

I usually do Munkharma before Orkogre, since you get a good weapon in Munkharma and all you get in Orkogre are a bunch of bananas. Also Munkharma's fountain is the best place to train swimming, and once you've maxed swmming you can swim up river for another nice treasure chest in the Giant's Cave. Additionally, Orkogre's TEMPLE MAP is almost always gone already even if you head there ASAP.

 

[Whisper]

How you summon savant troopers in New city?

and why you need hit rate for mage?


Also with this grind you lose maps to NPCs...

 

[Jason Liang]

Not really, as long as you don't rest it's less than a day in game time.

You can summon Savant Guards by trying to enter the Savant compound.

It's up to you but I wouldn't end with a Mage in the party. Back 3 I'd probably go Faerie Bishop, a Bard and a Ranger or a Psionic.

 

[mmap]

Yeah, I actually did some multiclassing:
fighter -> valkyrie
thief -> ninja
alchemist -> ranger
psionic -> monk (didn't even plan for that, just got roll 26! And i didn't use Cosmic Forge editor to hack the rolling algorithm, although, in retrospect, I should've used it)
mage -> samurai
priest -> lord

With "vanilla" party it would've been even worse... I still have some more options for multiclassing, for example, ranger to valkyrie, monk to ninja (and then maybe to monk again), etc.
One thing that annoys me a lot is how horrible W7's UI is. It's crap even for shitty DOS software from the early 90s. Compare to, say, M&M or even Betrayal at Krondor... Remember that pic with M&M being a small retarded tricycle and Wizardry a big, comfortable, fast bike? I'm sorry to say, but if we compare them as software (not just games), it's exactly the other way around

 

[Whisper]

For W7: If i change from mage to priest, will i be able to learn new mage spells with increase of wizardry skill?

 

[Whisper]

For Wiz 7, worry about combat and build up skills like Swimming, Ninjitsu, Skulduggery, Kirijitsu, Mapping, etc... first. Don't worry about the maps until you can handle the harder fights.

I usually grind Savant Guards in New City until I've gotten all my profession changes done and combat/ magic skills maxed. This should only take a few days (in both real time and game time), assuming you know the secret fountain. If not, just proceed normally until you come to a good fountain and level up therein (for example in Munkharma, which is also good for practicing swimming). Make sure you completely understand the profession change mechanics (you want to keep changing class at exactly the same character level, usually level 4-6, to improve your hit rate) and design your character's race+classes carefully- read the FAQ from Software Specialties. I don't have my notes anymore but there are some very easy, very basic profession progression loops for Elves and Faeries, for example.

Example:

Elf Female Mage (start for Mana regen) -> Samurai -> Valkyrie -> Ninja -> Samurai
5 -> 12 -> 10 +2 -> 12 -> 12
10 -> 11 -> 10 -> 10 +1 -> 11
10 -> 10 +1 -> 11 -> 10 -> 10
7 -> 9 +2 -> 11 +1 -> 12 -> 9
9 -> 12 -> 10 +2 -> 12 -> 12
9 -> 14 -> 11 +1 -> 12 +2 -> 14
9 -> 9 -> 9 -> 9 -> 9

You can easily change class at level 4 or 5 with this.

Or the basic Elf Mage -> Priest -> Mage -> Priest is just about the fastest progression possible.

Elves are sick in Wiz 7. Faeries are more of a pain to work with (they painfully lack Piety) but it's worth it for an endgame Faerie Bishop (due to the mana regen bonus) or Faerie Ninja.

If i get valkyrie levels and increase wizardry, can i get new mage spells?

 

[Jason Liang]

iirc you'll get Priest spells, but you'll get mage spells when you switch back to samurai.

 

[aweigh]

fluent

There is a world of Wizardry, which fuels our imaginations and fulfills our needs for deep RPG gameplay. I am happy to be able to play them all

 

[mmap]

So I decided to play W8. I'm having fun! It's a good game. But wow, without WizFast it's pretty much unplayable. What were they even thinking? Even with 5x speed combats take forever. Did they even play their own game? Anyway, WizFast solves that little problem. I do prefer more abstract combat system from previous Wizardries, 3D is decline
W8 really misses Bradley's writing... The story needs more humor, IMO, it just takes itself a little too seriously. Bradley knew how to do surrealism:

Spoiler

Inside the trunk is a rather shocking article of, well, armor or something. It appears to be a heavy bra made of hard glossy black leather, and lined with sharp pointy metal studs around its edges. Although its use is not quite apparent, it does seem to have the "potential" for a certain kind of (*ahem*) appeal, if worn by the right person. Still even more perplexing, along with the strange bra, buried in the bottom of the box you find a long black whip. Hmm, now what would these be doing in the queen's boudoir?

Anyway, I'm enjoing this game so far!

 

[Average Manatee]

How the system calculates hit rate is your character's hit rate will improve as long as you match or exceed your previous class level max. Say for example, you have an Elf Mage. At level 5 you class change her into a Priest. When you raise your Priest to levels 2-4, you won't increase your hit rate. But when you raise your Priest to 5, you will receive a hit rate increase. Then you immediately change her back to a Mage. When you hit level 5 Mage again, you will receive a hit rate increase again, and then you change her back to a Priest, etc... until you've maxed out both Spellbooks. But if you level up to 6, then you will have to level up to 6 to receive a new hit rate increase.

It's worth explicitly noting that if you change 6->1, level to 4, then 4->1, you'll then get a hit rate improvement when you level to 4 again. So you're never "stuck" if you messed up and leveled too far or something. And honestly Hit Rate improvements aren't worth obsessing too much over, the whole damn party doesn't need to be perfectly accurate with every strike. Level your fighters as fighters, your mages as mages, and class change once a while for the skill points and spells.

Mega Exploit:

Spoiler

Faeries can always class change at level 1 between (IIRC) Bard and Thief, which makes them insanely OP since you can continually go 1->x as a Bard, then go Bard->Thief->Bard, and you now get all hit chance improvements again from 1->x. Eventually you get to the point where every fight gives you multiple levels and you class change after every fight, ending up with unholy amounts of HP/SP/skills. And by eventually I mean really, really quickly.

 

[mmap]

Uninstalled because of bad puzzles, but if you can tolerate those, Wizardry 8 is a pretty good game (with WizFast).

 

[Lady_Error]

How much is problem is NPC competiton at first place? Does it make me hurry during all game?

You can track down the parties that have the maps you didn't get in time. There is a spell for this and you can also ask the NPC's where other NPC's are. Or ask them the map name to find out who has it.