Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[octavius]

What is your Priest's Piety? It affect's chances to learn new spells when leveling.

 

[BlackGoat]

So

Spoiler

pwnd Xorphitus, had a tiny bit of trouble with Drac and Becca but not too bad, grabbed the forge, did some research, reloaded, skipped the forge and fought Bela, would've like to have been bros with Bela, but looks like I'd have needed a save a little further back. The Bela fight was surprisingly easy, tho maybe my crew was a little overpowered.

I was thinking the single tile art for the entire game would bother me but was surprised how much they were able to convey through layout, particularly with the shipwreck in the forest which actually felt like a shipwreck, or the swamp which felt like a swamp. Really weird. Still, some actual unique art would've been nice. Oh well.

Playing with grid cartographer and gamelink definitely made the whole thing faster and smoother than it would otherwise have been, and I only had to look up a few things here or there. For the most part it seemed pretty clear what I had to do with all the different objects I was picking up. Surprisingly linear feeling, in a way. One thing always seemed to lead to the next.

I was gonna take a break and play some other shit before moving onto Wiz 7, but I got the itch and have already mapped out most of Nyctalinth. Really digging it, tho combat is a touch slower, and resting... takes... forever. I'm sure I'll burn out in a little bit and have to take a real break (same thing happened with Xeen after jumping straight into it after blowing through Isles of Terra).

Great games.

 

[Strange Fellow]

That was quick! So you didn't turn around after reaching the antechamber of the Cosmic Forge and press the button on the wall, then? There's quite a secret there if you do.
I had the exact same experience as you after finishing the game and starting 7, and I'm on Wizardry sabbatical at the moment, as I did indeed burn out not too far into VII. Did you do a lot of class-changing? Fought all the fixed encounters in the Hall of the Dead?

 

[BlackGoat]

Which button? The one that dumps you back at the entrance of the temple?

And yeah, I was pretty much playing all weekend so I steamrolled a lot of the game. Tons of class-switching because it got a bit addictive. Fought all those fixed encounters, got all that sweet gear. Sad that I couldn't take all of it with me, but I think I transferred the stuff that matters.

Just thinking about it, the ending if the player just goes for the forge is pretty funny. I can imagine that causing quite a bit of a butthurt back in the day if you didn't know there was more, haha. Obviously there's a cliffhanger either way, but metal monster is certainly more satisfying.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Which button? The one that dumps you back at the entrance of the temple?

That's the one

 

[Tigranes]

What is your Priest's Piety? It affect's chances to learn new spells when leveling.

18, and my mage has 18 IQ, but they still don't necessarily learn every spell. Which I am cool with, it spices things up a bit.

 

[BlackGoat]

Which button? The one that dumps you back at the entrance of the temple?

That's the one

I ran into that shit earlier in the temple during one of those "Choose the side room" things, pressing the button instead of walking across the chasm, so I was careful to save before pressing anything again.

 

[Tigranes]

WERDNA DED, BITCHES

The end came unexpectedly. I reached Level 9, thought I'd map it out, but it was a very straightforward layout and then off I dropped to Level 10 - which was again fairly straightforward about dodging the 'Back to start' pads.

The party had become pretty competent at this point, so I was glad the final battle was a bit of a challenge. First time, Werdna starts with Tiltowait and fucked everybody basically in one go. Ultimately I managed to get a Montino on him, and wear him down with everything I had while he spent quite a few turns silenced. The party was around level 10 - I don't know if that's low or high, I suspect it could be higher.

Then it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to import my characters. The thing is, I tried opening the Wiz2 scenario in the NES package and then using 'turbo files', and it lets me choose characters to move (and rechoose their alignment). But then there's some kind of 'inheritance' process - like it's generating a descendant - and I end up with Level 1 characters with randomly depreciated attributes. I thought you're supposed to keep your stats and levels and gold, just not the equipment?

Anyway, as a relative blobber noob, I really enjoyed it. I suspect some of the shit like pits and spinners would create some seriously rage-inducing scenarios, but with emulation I could avoid losing massive progress while still getting a nice sense of danger. The later levels, NES-edited ones included, had a great mazelike feel and it was fun to map it out on graph paper.

 

[octavius]

Wizardry 3 uses descendants characters who are capped at 15 in stats.
NES changes the game order to 1-3-2 for some reason.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, apparently there's some weirdness going on. So originally, could you import your party Wiz 1 -> 2 -> 3? I thought you were meant to, but is that wrong? Is it better to restart each game with a new level 1 party? I thought Wiz2 was balanced for higher levels.

I'm using the English patched version, the integrated pack, so as you say the game order is 1-3-2. But the turbo files keep giving me these descendant characters (in which case I don't see why I wouldn't just reroll new ones).

(I keep saying NES, but it's SNES Story Of Llylgamyn collection)

 

[octavius]

Yeah, apparently there's some weirdness going on. So originally, could you import your party Wiz 1 -> 2 -> 3?

1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 5 actually.

I thought you were meant to, but is that wrong? Is it better to restart each game with a new level 1 party? I thought Wiz2 was balanced for higher levels.

DOS Wiz 2 was balanced for higher levels. You can start with lvl 1 character, but there is a rather high level spell you need to cast in the beginning, so it would involve some grinding.

 

[Tigranes]

Thanks. OK, looks like I'll really need to figure out how to do a proper party import on the SNES version. aweigh or anyone else? I'm sure somebody on the Codex knows.

 

[Strange Fellow]

It sounds like you did it correctly, though, doesn't it? You're supposed to get descendants of the original characters, and that's what you got.

 

[Tigranes]

So you're always supposed to lose all gold, equipment, items, and get downgraded stats? If so, isn't it better to roll new dudes and choose your stats?

 

[Strange Fellow]

So you're always supposed to lose all gold, equipment, items, and get downgraded stats? If so, isn't it better to roll new dudes and choose your stats?

Haven't played Wiz 3, so I can't help you, sorry. octavius says that imported characters are capped at 15 in stats, so I would assume that's also the case for characters you create yourself. Anything else would greatly penalize you for importing, which I can't imagine the designers would do. octavius will know. If imported and created characters are equal, there's still no good reason not to import, provided you're happy with the stats of your Wiz 1 party, right?

 

[Jason Liang]

So you're always supposed to lose all gold, equipment, items, and get downgraded stats? If so, isn't it better to roll new dudes and choose your stats?

You get to keep the chevron (s).

 

[octavius]

You can't create characters at all in the original Wiz 3, only import from 1 or 2.

 

[newtmonkey]

Wizardry 1
Enjoying Wiz 6 so much, I decided to put that on hold and get back to my PSX Wiz 1 run. Not much to report as I am going through the "optional" levels. I just finished exploring level 7, character levels all around level 11 or so. I found some Full Plate +2 for my fighter, and (sadly) a +3 shield for only evil characters. Compared with the DOS version, stat gain/loss is completely different. In the DOS version I had characters who had dropped to 0 in stats; in the PSX version, each character now has multiple 18s.

This is a great game to chill out to do and drink. Err, at least this port is, as you can't screw yourself by making stupid drunken decisions.

 

[newtmonkey]

Wizardry 1
Finished exploring levels 8 and 9, but even though I only ran from a few battles, I was only able to level two characters up (my thief and samurai). I'm really not sure if I can take level 10 on at this point (neither of my mages have TILTOWAIT), but I plan on making a couple of attempts tonight to see how it goes. I can convert my Priest to a Lord now, but at this point in the game I'm not sure it would be worth it at all. In the worst case, I'll wander around level 9 to gain a few levels.

[EDIT]
Well, that was a disaster haha. I realized as I was exploring through level 10 that I also didn't have access to the teleport spell (I figured I'd explore a bit of level 10 and then teleport out). So I decided to give Werdna a shot anyway, and it was a massacre. I was surprised by Werdna, a Vampire Lord, and 4 Vampiures. During the first round two of my characters (one fighter and my priest) were paralyzed (as well as had 4 (!!!) levels drained). I knew at this point I was already screwed, but wanted to see how wrecked I got. During the second round one of my mages got off a spell, but then everyone got drained anywhere from 1-4 levels, plus paralyzed, and my game was over.

 

[Grauken]

I can probably whip up a profile to make tracking for the SNES wiz1-3 available in the newest GridCart version, if somebody needs that

 

[newtmonkey]

Grauken
Not related to Wiz at all, but do you think it would be "easy" to make a profile for DOS version of Dungeon Master? It's a bit annoying to map manually in Grid Cartographer since it's played in real time. I don't know the first thing about making profiles, but if you think it wouldn't be difficult, I wouldn't mind giving a it a shot.

 

[Grauken]

I haven't published the profile because I wanted to make each level fit correctly above each other, but I can probably do just a simple profile that covers all levels, if you want that

 

[Grauken]

Well, tracking profile (still have to fill out the map manually), as the map isn't done yet, once that is done you can basically have a sort of automap

 

[newtmonkey]

That would be great! I don't mind filling the map out manually at all, as long as my position is tracked on it.

 

[octavius]

Wizardry 1
Finished exploring levels 8 and 9, but even though I only ran from a few battles, I was only able to level two characters up (my thief and samurai). I'm really not sure if I can take level 10 on at this point (neither of my mages have TILTOWAIT), but I plan on making a couple of attempts tonight to see how it goes. I can convert my Priest to a Lord now, but at this point in the game I'm not sure it would be worth it at all. In the worst case, I'll wander around level 9 to gain a few levels.

[EDIT]
Well, that was a disaster haha. I realized as I was exploring through level 10 that I also didn't have access to the teleport spell (I figured I'd explore a bit of level 10 and then teleport out). So I decided to give Werdna a shot anyway, and it was a massacre. I was surprised by Werdna, a Vampire Lord, and 4 Vampiures. During the first round two of my characters (one fighter and my priest) were paralyzed (as well as had 4 (!!!) levels drained). I knew at this point I was already screwed, but wanted to see how wrecked I got. During the second round one of my mages got off a spell, but then everyone got drained anywhere from 1-4 levels, plus paralyzed, and my game was over.

Hmm...what's your mage's INT? Should have TILTOWAIT by now.

Sounds like you had bad luck, getting surprised.
If you can avoid surprise and if Werdna doesn't open with TILTOWAIT, the end battle is not too hard.