Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[Strange Fellow]

Mines are good. There was no part of the game I really disliked, apart from having to do the final dungeon twice.

 

[newtmonkey]

Oh dear.

Already regretting it, I forgot that stats reset to minimums ;_;

[EDIT]
It only took an hour or so of normal exploration to bring my (now) thief from level 1 to level 7, so I am seriously considering just rolling up a new character with a nice stats roll.

Right now I could use more healing (sucks only being able to heal a single character per round in tough combats), so I was thinking of doing the following with my current party (average character level 7)

Fighter
Samurai
Priest => Switch to Valkyrie
Thief => Throw away and make a new Priest from scratch
Mage 1
Mage 2 => Switch to Ninja

(The Priest and Mage 2 are able to switch to those classes right now).

[EDIT 2]
Apparently the game doesn't let you replace characters. Ugh.

 

[newtmonkey]

My second attempt against Fritz and Klaus went much better.
The first flash spell only blinded my Samurai and (useless) Thief, and I was able to kill Klaus in a couple of rounds by focusing all my firepower on him. From then on it was a matter of taking Fritz down, which went much smoother this time around.

Since I can't replace characters anyway, I'm gonna just hang on to my Thief (like I have any other choice) and won't change any classes just yet. Thief is only a couple points away from becoming eligible for Priest, so once that happens I'll consider switching Priest>Valkyrie, Thief>Priest, and Mage 2>Ninja.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Fighter
Samurai
Priest => Switch to Valkyrie
Thief => Throw away and make a new Priest from scratch
Mage 1
Mage 2 => Switch to Ninja

Sounds like an excellent plan. And yes, Blinding Flash is the wasp's nipples.

 

[BlackGoat]

There's no way to replace a character? I could've sworn I'd seen references to replacing characters (say, if one dies), but I can't find any exact instructions on how to do so, and I didn't see any new Edit options on a Dead Character Review

 

[BlackGoat]

I had a similar fuck up by switching my bard-mage to a thief lol
Finally got her to ninja after leveling back up through bard by spinning at the mine fountain and save-scumming stat-ups
Now I can happily move forward.

 

[newtmonkey]

The manual mentions a "replace" command but I guess it eventually never made it into the game.

I finished exploring much of the pyramid (upper levels) and have just entered the crypt. My Thief is JUST ONE POINT away from being able to switch to Priest. Once she gets there, I'll level her up to level 6 or 7, then change my current Priest to Valkyrie and second Mage to Ninja.

I am addicted to this game. Yesterday I got up early and was able to finish work around 5:30 pm, and then was just gonna boot up Wiz 6 to check my party and see what to do about class changing etc. Before I knew it, it was like 11:00 pm and I had been playing nonstop.

I love every single thing about this game—love the graphics, love the quirky PC speaker sounds, love the text that is like the sweetest combination of your Dungeon Master back in middle school trying to sound cool and what I assume are endless in-jokes that only DW Bradley understands resulting in PURE ATMOSPHERE where the fact that the walls look the same whether you are in a castle or climbing a mountain melts away and you don't even care anymore. I thought I'd hate the fact the magic is not Vancian as in previous Wiz games, but was delighted when I realized each school of magic gets its own spell point pool, so in effect, it is really quite close to Vancian magic. And the first time those topless Amazulu monsters slid on the screen, instead of being embarrassed like the crpgaddict said I should be, I was like, hell yeah, bring it on! Who the fuck doesn't like naked people??? My wife walked in during that very same combat, asked what I was doing, and I told her "fighting naked girls in the dungeon" and she didn't bat an eye.

Forgive me, Wed is my drinking night during the week and I finished work early, so I am a bit drunk now.

Right now, this has got to be in my top 10 games OF ALL TIME. Thank god I have Wiz 7 and then Grimoire to look forward to after this. And also finishing W&W finally I guess.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Reading about people playing your favourite games never gets old.

 

[Tigranes]

OK. So I am finally playing Wizardry 1.

I actually tried Wiz8 & World of Xeen in the past and found it difficult to get hooked, but GRIMOIRE has shown me the way, and actually Wiz1 at least to begin with is engrossing, and not as brutal as the Codex has made me think. I suppose that comes later.

I'm using the NES version and graph paper, tried to only read the manual, more or less. No idea what to roll but did two fighters, priest, thief, bishop and mage, and I think fully mapped out level 1. Found the fast ride down but will probably leg it each floor one by one.

Leveling up is interesting, I have no idea what the range is for good/bad outcomes. Looks like a level 3 fighter could be anywhere between like 10 and 40 HP.

 

[octavius]

Wiz 1 is not too difficult if you play cautiously.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Tigranes FYI apparently some of the floors were changed in the NES port, so if you care a great deal about the "original experience" you might want to look for a different version.

 

[newtmonkey]

IN BEFORE aweigh
Tigranes The absolute best ports of the first five games are the PSX versions. They are pretty much exactly the same (slightly higher chance of rolling higher bonus points, MAYBE slightly higher chance of random encounters in corridors), and you can swap between modern/classic graphics, turn automap ON/OFF, etc.

Having said that, I prefer the soundtrack in the NES Wiz ports.

 

[octavius]

Wiz 1 is not the same without a 1/3 chance of stats going down when leveling up.

 

[newtmonkey]

One of my characters dropped to 0 in one of her stats in the DOS version lolz

 

[Matador]

My favourite wizardry 1-3 versions are the SNES ones. Impressive monster art.

 

[octavius]

One of my characters dropped to 0 in one of her stats in the DOS version lolz

One of mine dropped to 31. That made me think that stat decreases may be a bug after all.

 

[newtmonkey]

Weird :O

I didn't notice my characters getting less effective as their stats dropped, so I dunno. Maybe it doesn't even matter.

 

[octavius]

Stats matter, all right, but like in D&D it's only the values 1-3 and 16-18 that that give modifiers.

 

[Tigranes]

I would still play with the original line art, but it looked like the Nintendo versions were pretty good way to get the first 3 games rolling quickly. I thought the map changes were minor as well, and I enjoy graph paper + DUMAPIC. If there's something about the Nintendo version that is decline, though, yeah, let me know.

Mapped out level 2. All of my maps are fugly as hell because I'm using pen (in the middle of a move, was playing in a hotel) and I draw 30 squares before I realise I'm teleported. It's cool, though, after the initial disorientation you can quickly figure out what happened, and same goes for dark zones.

The monsters generally seem pretty weak, but it's the limited means for recovering from status effects that can destroy a guy very quickly. Fichte had to pray to the RNG gods and DIOS spam gave him literally 1 HP enough to get back to town poisoned. Seems like even a couple of potions of neutralisation suck up money fast, so if anyone dies I might not be able to afford the res.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I thought the map changes were minor as well, and I enjoy graph paper + DUMAPIC.

The changes are pretty substantial, with some of the floors having been completely redone. I can't judge their quality, not having played the NES version, but most of the changes seem to take away from the cleverness of the original designs. I bet aweigh knows them both inside out. I'm sure you don't want to start over at this point, though, and it's not like you can recognize any of the changes.

 

[Matador]

I recall that in Wiz1 SNES version there was layout changes only in farming optional levels,not in the ones necessary to complete the adventure.

 

[aweigh]

The SNES art is really beautiful.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

I think the DOS version of wizardry had a 1/3 chance of lowering a stat at level up while the Apple II version only had a 1/10 chance to lower a stat. Not sure if it was intentional or a bug.

 

[Tigranes]

Now I am on level 4, and my party is around level 8. Some dumb questions:

So the identification mechanics. A Rod of Iron will take 1500g to identify at the store... after which it sells for 1500g? Stumps me as to how I'm ever to turn a profit. It took me a long time to work out that Bishops can identify for free.

Healing. In-between maze dives, I can take a quick nap, re-enter the maze, and then spam all my spells, rinse & repeat in order to heal up - but isn't there a better way, besides burning up a crapload of money on good inn rooms?

Level 3 was a little bit tortuous, with all the spinners and pits. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to which of the intersections would be pits? And since one fall could take out half your party, it seems like the only way to go is savescum? Of course I used the side doors to navigate, but I'm wondering how people fared when they were doing this without emulation. Between those and enemies that like to poison you, it's really starting to get very precarious.

 

[octavius]

Having a Bishop sitting in the guild and ID loot when you return can be a good idea in Wiz 1-2. 3 or 5 changed it so the effectiveness of the Bishop increased with level, and you needed to bring him along.

Healing: just use the cheapest room. AFAIK there's no practical difference.

I definitely remember not save scumming on lvl 3, so it was not a big problem with the DOS version at least.
Just avoid the intersections as much as possible, and map the rest of the level first.