Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[Darth Roxor]

They don't suffer any debuffs for that?

They do.

But two extra debuffed dudes are still better than no extra dudes at all

 

[Black]

Pretty sure they do get hexed. And complain every 5 seconds.
Then again, RFS will go almost anywhere and do you really need any other rpc than an android monk?

 

[empi]

Just finished Wiz6. How much bigger is Wiz7? From what I've heard starting Wiz7 is a pretty huge time investment.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Just finished Wiz6. How much bigger is Wiz7? From what I've heard starting Wiz7 is a pretty huge time investment.

I'd say 3 times as big at least. Wiz6 is all in all a pretty small game imo.

 

[octavius]

Just finished Wiz6. How much bigger is Wiz7? From what I've heard starting Wiz7 is a pretty huge time investment.

Wiz 7 is twice as big as it needs to be, if counting all the random encounters when exploring the whole map.

 

[cvv]

A funny fact, Wizardry 7 is enormous content-wise but as for pure geography, you can run from the Sphinx Cave to the Myrmideon Forest in like five minutes (sans random encounters).

***

Btw is there any point to the Umpani - T'Rang alliance in Wiz 8? I still got Rodan and Drazic in my party, I'm about to proceed to the Ascension Peak and I'm not sure if it's worth handing them back to Yamir and close the quest. Does actually something interesting happen if I do? A giant free-for-all between Rapax, Umpani and T'Rang? Both Yamir and Z'Ant talk about meeting me on Ascension Peak so I assume there is some C&C there. Otherwise I keep both dudes, their crits will be invaluable against the Rapax HP sponges.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Nope, nothing happens. Turning them in gets you a lot of Exp though.

Presumably those quests are unfinished. Regardless of who you ally with, no one ever shows up at ascension peak to help you.

 

[cvv]

Nope, nothing happens. Turning them in gets you a lot of Exp though.

Well no, you get the XP after you shoot down Savant's ship and before you report back to Yamir. I've checked and absolutely nothing happens when you close the quest. Yamir just says he'll meet you at AP and Drazic with Rodan leave your party. That's it.

So if there's no C&C here I'm definitely keeping them.

 

[Leitz]

Has the name of the world on which the first six Wizardry's take place ever been mentioned anywhere?

It's called Wizardry. Quotes from the manual of Wiz6: "Journey to the Land of Wizardry"..."In the underground caves of Wizardry one might just find whole groups of Gnomes in their natural habitat"...."Nearly the smallest of all races found within Wizardry"

 

[Grauken]

I don't think this is meant to be taken literally, this is more similar to sayings like to the land of magic and adventure, etc., or in the world of Wizardry scenarios

 

[TigerKnee]

Regardless of who you ally with, no one ever shows up at ascension peak to help you.

Imagine if it was complete and the big battle becomes an hour longer because now you gotta wait for all your NPC buddies to take their turns

 

[Baron Dupek]

Started Wiz VI, cleared out basement, 1st and 2nd floor and met two NPCs that can trade with me, they got anything I need for now except armors. I had to bail out from few places like Fat Rat battle because stomping rats when my team wear rags is not great concept...
Where to obtain something better than fur and rags? I found one shield that can be evoked, chain haulbert(?) and that's it.

And now I learned that slowing down cycles in DOSbox when you pick locks is considered "a cheating", yeah because savescumming is better when everything get jammed amrite?

 

[aweigh]

wizardry 6 and onwards are not canon, so i wouldn't take anything written in the wiz6 manual to have any bearing on real Wizardry.

 

[cvv]

And now I learned that slowing down cycles in DOSbox when you pick locks is considered "a cheating", yeah because savescumming is better when everything get jammed amrite?

I think you can use the same trick with the Pause button as in W7. I've been doing it in both games since the 1990s, not really concerned about whether or not it's an exploit.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Now my humble armor collection got bigger with Metal Bra +2 from Secret Queen's Stash (c) and a whip. What a nice folks once run this now dust covered castle... and the king's adventures with 14yo servant... I'm not british politic enough to enjoy this shit.

I might be spoiled with popamole trash but I don't see how to deal with lockpicking without borderline exploits. On the contrary - traps disarming is nice, some imitation of scrabble or whatever (or any other games that you can't play with normies in real life cause they are sooooo busyyy).

First impression - dealing with interface and going through menus felt like a hassle.
But then I realized modern games are not better in that department. At least I can fight and cast spells by tapping well placed keys. Can't say the same about modern games unless Interface Designer (r) was MMO addict and copy-pasted 1-5 button mashing crap was inspired by them and made same crap in his game.

 

[octavius]

I might be spoiled with popamole trash but I don't see how to deal with lockpicking without borderline exploits.

Don't obsess about locked doors. If you can't open them, return later with a key (some generic keys are random monster drops) or better lockpicking skills.

 

[empi]

Yeah after the first part of the game in the castle, there very few doors to pick for a long while. Just don't worry about doors you can't pick early on, come back later when you've raised your lockpicking/have keys/can open with spells

 

[Leitz]

I highly recommend using the Detect Secret spell for everyone, even though people seem to avoid it and say "you will find anything anyway".

 

[octavius]

It's useful in the mines, where the Search skills doesn't work.

 

[Great Deceiver]

First impression - dealing with interface and going through menus felt like a hassle.
But then I realized modern games are not better in that department. At least I can fight and cast spells by tapping well placed keys. Can't say the same about modern games unless Interface Designer (r) was MMO addict and copy-pasted 1-5 button mashing crap was inspired by them and made same crap in his game.

I prefer to play these games with the keyboard exclusively, so for me Wiz 6's interface works perfectly. Just forget there is mouse support, it makes everything slower and less efficient.

I think keyboard-driven interfaces are one of the things that were lost in modern gaming, and it's a shame. The only games that still feature them prominently are roguelikes.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The lockpicking in Wiz6-7 is bullshit anyway. It's only random luck; reloading isn't cheating, that's what it's meant for.

It's a function of time. Randomness x time spent = progress. The more random something is, the more time you have to be willing to spend to get through it. That's the real "resource" in Wiz 6, time. That's why character creation takes forever. You can accept sub-par stats, or spend more time to get good characters. Trade off is up to you.

Later RPGs have all focused on time as the prime resource, only more as a function of grinding rather than random luck.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think Wiz lost a lot when it adopted a save anywhere system. I think tension for these types of games is crucial, and it is impossible to enforce tension when it's possible to just save and reload at will when things go south. Even if people cheated back in the day (by duplicating save files before adventuring), as planned, I think it's as close to a perfect system as can be. The game needs to save its state constantly and not allow for selective reloading.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Sure, but it's part of the larger trend in RPGs to move away from resource-management challenges and focusing more on character building or combat tactics. In the older Wizardries the battles are never that hard, it's a question of how many spells/hitpoints you're willing to spend on this encounter, how far you are from an exit, how long you need to go before retreating, etc.

 

[cvv]

I think Wiz lost a lot when it adopted a save anywhere system. I think tension for these types of games is crucial, and it is impossible to enforce tension when it's possible to just save and reload at will when things go south. Even if people cheated back in the day (by duplicating save files before adventuring), as planned, I think it's as close to a perfect system as can be. The game needs to save its state constantly and not allow for selective reloading.

"Not being able to save anywhere" and "automatically save constantly (the ironman mode)" are two very different things. The latter one basically means a roguelike. Are you really arguing that a game like Wizardry 7 should be a roguelike? Because that seems like a really bad idea to me. These huge open world games wouldn't be served well with a permadeath system. If you unwittingly wandered after 50 hours of play into a high-level region and got a party-wipe in 2 turns you'd be a tad miffed.

But saving anywhere IS a decline, I agree. One of the reasons Dark Souls is such a great game is precisely the tension generated by you not being able to save anytime. But there's no permadeath in DS so it's ok. Point is other open-world RPGs would benefit from this too, problem is we are in the minority. In Kingdom Come: Deliverance you'll have "save charges" that you'd find in the world, plus farming them and using them too often gives you debuffs. I think it's a great idea but people are already bitching about that. The majority will probably always prefer saving anywhere.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Sure, but it's part of the larger trend in RPGs to move away from resource-management challenges and focusing more on character building or combat tactics. In the older Wizardries the battles are never that hard, it's a question of how many spells/hitpoints you're willing to spend on this encounter, how far you are from an exit, how long you need to go before retreating, etc.

Sorry but just no. This makes me think you haven't played that much Wizardry 1-3. Do you realize the number of instakill possibilities in those games?

re: autosave/ironman - yes, I was speaking in a classic Wizardry context, I don't think strict ironman would work in a larger game like the later Wizardries. But I still defend the idea of not being able to freely save/load, there should always be a tradeoff.