Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[coldcrow]

Debuffs are the first round of spells. After that it's AoE or situational spells for the ranged party. My point was that melee and AoE damage is mutually exclusive in this game.

 

[Strange Fellow]

If your party is good enough to disable every single enemy for multiple turns with a single alpha strike, and your melee dudes can singlehandedly take any enemy down in one turn, then you powergame a lot more than me. Even if you do, you're clearly talking about the late game, and I say again: optimizing for late game is dumb. Late game is always easy.

 

[theSavant]

Btw. is there a trick to get Windowed Mode working correctly? Although I can change somewhere the resolution and then Alt+Enter and then the game is windowed,
BUT then my mouse movement is kinda restricted to the lower right half of the window... which makes it unusable.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Btw. is there a trick to get Windowed Mode working correctly? Although I can change somewhere the resolution and then Alt+Enter and then the game is windowed,
BUT then my mouse movement is kinda restricted to the lower right half of the window... which makes it unusable.

You could try the dgVoodoo program, which solved all of my Wiz 8-related issues, although I never did try to run it in windowed mode. Honestly though, if you have it running stably at all, you should count yourself lucky. I'd at least make a backup before messing with anything.

 

[Incendax]

If your party is good enough to disable every single enemy for multiple turns with a single alpha strike, and your melee dudes can singlehandedly take any enemy down in one turn, then you powergame a lot more than me. Even if you do, you're clearly talking about the late game, and I say again: optimizing for late game is dumb. Late game is always easy.

That’s what I did the first time I played. 2 Mook Fighters, 2 Bards, 1 Gadgeteer, 1 Bishop.

It was a weird party because everything got CC’ed immediately, and then the mooks went to town.

 

[Gnidrologist]

That's exactly the impression I have of a bard, and that's why I never made a party with a bard. Not even in other games (not even in Bard's Tale 4). Instead another wizard always seemed to be the better choice.

Bards can use two rings of +20 ST, which makes them your additional fighter around mid game. I usually give him Fang too to have 125 ST and with additional high DEX the only thing worse than fighter is his weaker damage resistance, but it is compensated with music. Some instruments are very useful like those that cast insanity/pandemonium, haste or hex. Also heal all, if don't have a dedicated caster. Good for smaller fighter based parties. I agree that stamina is a bitch though, even at high levels and neckleses help not.

I think I'll drop the idea of 1-3 man-parties completely. Also watched some Solo Runs... whole game consists of running away, tedious training, long and boring battles, requiring help of friendly NPC groups in battles (which take even longer then), and even at level 30+ too much cherrypicking of enemies required. So I agree with what you guys said, that it's not very reasonable. More a challenge for masochists.

Not with rogue though. Gets very powerful fast and doesn't require much grinding or power training. By mid game it gets almost invulnerable to most attacks and gets away with shit even in debuffed state bar unconsciousness.

 

[theSavant]

So I stayed with a Bard, and thought of his advantages:
- Can use instruments in areas where magic is prohibited (like in Trynton somewhere)
- Cannot be silenced by the Silence spell

Except... none of these work

-> When he is in an area where magic is prohibited, the instrument fizzles
-> When he is Silenced by a sorcerer, he cannot use any instruments anymore. Not even those who don't require "blowing by mouth".

That's a bummer. And I think it's not right. Maybe only the Gadgeteer is "immune" to all that - but even that I doubt now, because eventually gadgets are "spells" too.
I'm not sure that's the way it was supposed to work in the game...

Edit 1: where is that fucking "Bullroarer" in Trynton??? Can't find it. This gives the Bard only Piercing Pipes as a Weapon until Level 20 or so where he gets Nuclear Blast. This is veeery baaad.
Edit 2: internet says they have removed Bullroarer from the final game because Bard was too overpowered then. Seriously?!

 

[theSavant]

Damn... the TRang Questline is either bugged or deliberately annoying... I mean W.T.F.

- I really can't get that Fake Security Pass from Sgt. Kunar. As already said in a previous post: first you tell him the pass phrase (something with "Destiny Arrives Tonight") which he recognizes, but then immediately asks "Who sent me?". And there is no correct answer to that. Kunar then becomes completely stubborn. Maybe if I had a pickpocket skill, I could steal the Fake Security Pass from him, but that's not the way it's supposed to work. After all Z'Ant himself gave the mission. And every fucking game guide says Kunar cooperates. I mean... wtf?!

- Then I thought I must find Drazic first because he may know an additional passphrase or so. So I went to the Rapax Away Camp, freed him and tried to bring him back. I had set a Portal directly in Marten's Bluff, and so I just teleported back. And what did Drazic do in Marten's Bluff? He ragequitted my party because I had not freed the Umpani... wtf?!

- I reloaded the game and did the same step as above, and now Drazic stayed in the party. I immediately went to Z'Ant. Z'Ant however didn't react to Drazic's presence. He repeated his usual phrase "that Drazic is maybe killed or I should look for him. Hey idiot... he's in my party!? Possible trigger words didn't work either. After the fruitless conversation Drazic seemed to remember that he should have ragequitted my party already... and so he ragequitted. When I tried to recruit him again, he refused and said I'm an enemy of the TRang Empire... wtf?!

- Ok, so I loaded another savegame where I just freed and recruited Drazic. Only Drazic was in the party, not the Umpani. I was still in the Rapax Away Camp. Knowing that Drazic has neither a 2nd passphrase (for "Who sent you?") nor is recognized by Z'Ant, I just wanted to expell him from the party. Didn't work! Couldn't get rid of him! He remained in the party and insisted we had to bring peace to Umpani/Trang... wtf?!


Summary:
The game practically forces the Alliance Quest down your throat. And it does so very hard. It even "blocks" the faction's own questline with lots of "trickery". Which is utter nonsense!


Now the only ways I can think of finishing the "pure" TRang questline are the following:
a) Pickpocket/Kill Kunar to get his Fake Secuirty Pass (which is sooo perverse and contradictory because he's on your side)
b) Enlist in the Umpani army and "earn" the real Security Pass. But here's the catch: then you have to do almost all of the Umpani quests as well... ridiculous. That's exactly what I tried to avoid. Having to do both questlines, although you allied only with 1 faction. What stupid fucking quest design is that?

And because of (b) the game practically forces you to become a "double agent". And so HeLi can blackmail the player. How harebrained is that?


This is all so dumb...

Choices and Consequences my ass...

Eventually I see only 3 real choices, because everything else is contradictory, absurd or a pain in the ass:
1) You ally with both TRang & Umpani
2) You ally with Rapax (Templar)
3) You shit on all 3 of them and go your own way

 

[Darth Roxor]

Sounds like you hit a bug of some kind, because I could get Kunar to give me the fake pass the last time I played.

 

[coldcrow]

So I stayed with a Bard, and thought of his advantages:
- Can use instruments in areas where magic is prohibited (like in Trynton somewhere)
- Cannot be silenced by the Silence spell

Except... none of these work

-> When he is in an area where magic is prohibited, the instrument fizzles
-> When he is Silenced by a sorcerer, he cannot use any instruments anymore. Not even those who don't require "blowing by mouth".

That's a bummer. And I think it's not right. Maybe only the Gadgeteer is "immune" to all that - but even that I doubt now, because eventually gadgets are "spells" too.
I'm not sure that's the way it was supposed to work in the game...

Edit 1: where is that fucking "Bullroarer" in Trynton??? Can't find it. This gives the Bard only Piercing Pipes as a Weapon until Level 20 or so where he gets Nuclear Blast. This is veeery baaad.
Edit 2: internet says they have removed Bullroarer from the final game because Bard was too overpowered then. Seriously?!

You are still thinking in the wrong direction. Bard/Gadgeteers main advantage is that they do no need powercast, as the their respective skill includes that.

 

[calgary.alberta]

Wizardry 3 - can go suck a donkey dick

FUCKING Priests of Fung FUCK

*Throws a chair through window*

ass assssssssss

 

[octavius]

Ah, that Priest of ng moment.

 

[Watser]

Wizardry 3 - can go suck a donkey dick

FUCKING Priests of Fung FUCK

*Throws a chair through window*

ass assssssssss

We've all been there brother, and we all rage in unison.

 

[calgary.alberta]

Sure looking forward to starting Wizardry IV after this *eye roll*

 

[theSavant]

"Quickly" finished my Wiz8 playthrough. Took longer than expected...

- Ascension Peak felt almost as long as all the other things I did before. No idea why.

- I have completely forgotten about the Rapax Blockade. Had to become a Rapax Templar to get to the Rapax teleporter. I should have put my own Portal at Ascension Peak before to skip that part.

- Went to Ascension Peak without killing Al-Sedexus, in hexed status and losing health points (which I counteracted with Amulet of Healing)

- Encountered "my rapax child", who said that I killed her mother. Not true, she was still alive. I continued in cursed status. The game obviously didn't plan that players are so masochistic. Imo it was also a game error that they were hostile. They should have been friendly. I checked the faction ratings and until the end of the game I remained friendly to all factions in the game world. Which was not what I planned either (wanted to side with TRang only), but what can you do... Did not kill "my daughter" either, but fled the battle.

- The party: fighter-fighter-bard-alchemist was decent. Next time however I would probably choose another caster instead of the bard. Which would also give you a second portal-caster. Besides I tried to roll with a full 6-man-party before, but it felt really clunky to control in comparison. So I went back to the 4-man-party.

- I gave my bard the necklace of stamina and the robes of rejuvenation (also stamina regeneration), but it really didn't help. After 2x using the instrument she was out of stamina and fell unconscious. She recovered each round again, but not much and therefore prone to errors when using the instrument again. Luckily the alchemist had a Stamina spell.

- The instrument "Arresting Aria" does indeed try to paralyze *all enemies*. Regardless how far away they are and in what direction you look. All are targeted. This was completely new to me, because otherwise spells depend on radius, cone or specific enemy group.

- Although I wanted to side with T'Rang only, I hit another problem: to get Saxx's saxophone (for Soulshield) you must enlist in the Umpani military. You can't even talk to him before because he breaks up the conversation with "hey wait, you are not even enlisted yet". Damn... didn't think about that.

- I did not continue the TRang or Umpani quests any longer. Made no sense when it was bugged.

- The Rapax Away Camp was different than I remembered. I entered this area before even going to the Rapax Rift. The Templars at the Camp said it was forbidden to go in, but I could sneak by them without issues. And once I was in, nobody cared anymore. Not even the guards at the entrance when I approached them again. No one attacked me or went hostile. I could freely move around. Didn't know that. I think in my very first playthrough I just killed everything, and that was why everyone was hostile?

- I experienced a similar issue with an "Who sends you?" question (at Sgt. Kunar) in the Rapax Castle before Initiation. There were 2 Templar guys: One of them required me to pay a fee for initiation, the other guy would open a door after I answered him the question "Who has sent you?". I knew exactly the answer to the question, but as long as I had not payed the initiation fee he kept saying I'm a liar. Only after paying the first guy the initiation fee he accepts the answer and opens the door. Maybe it's similar with Sgt. Kunar. Maybe there is yet another action required to do... but I don't know which.

- Sneaked by the sorcerers in Southern Wilderness to get Fang, Boomerang Shuriken etc. Starting from the circular staircase past the Sorcerers into the next corridor and corner. It can barely be reached, but if you run against the wall so hard that you barely make any steps forward, you come farther than just running straight ahead. Weird but lifesaving. I teleported out afterwards though.

- I didn't find the Siege Arbalest nor the Strongbow on the places theys were supposed to be (both having an instakill percentage of 5-6%). Luckily Ferro sold them both and so I could still experience them. Tbh I hardly noticed the instakills. Now I understand why the Tripleshot Crossbow is the better choice. I also didn't find the Blade Cuisineart (which has also instantkill bonus). That said, I didn't notice that many instakills from "Fang" either. The only time I noticed instakills was in another party, where a Rogue had 2 Stilettos.

- Quicksand spell... is funny somehow: when you only use spellpower level 1-3 it seems to work much better than spellpower level 4-7. I have absolutely no idea why that is, but it saves a lot of spellpoints. Went with level 2 mostly then.

- End fight was harder than expected. I was level 22 (Dark Savant was 38) and only had "Fang" and the "Demonsbane". Badly prepared. Had to kill him with Fang alone, because Demonsbane never hit him. I think this has to do with the "To Hit: +2" attribute. Never thought that this has so much impact. Even the Canezou Dagger hit better (it had also "To Hit: +2"), while Demonsbane had nothing.

- The Dark Savant spawned so many creatures it was hilarious. With some trick I could lure him back to a corner where I could hide and only he attack me and no spawns. But if you keep the path free back to the Ascension Portal you can make him spawn endless creatures and level up as long as you wish.

- I was totally annoyed by that slow and forced cutscene right before you fight the Dark Savant. It feels like you are watching 5 minutes of blabla and then immediately the combat begins. When you die in this combat you have to watch it all over again. Unbearable. Really really unbearable. The only way to not watch it again, is to immediately flee the combat, run back to the Ascension Portal so the Dark Savant loses track of you. Then combat is over and you can finally save the game and engage the Dark Savant whenever you want (in this case Bela will die as he is the only one engaged in combat... but what can you do).

- I'm not sure what's the difference between the ending "Write in book" and "Tear out page"? Somehow both sound very similar and the final screen displays the same description.

- Eh....??? I thought there were 8 different endings or so for the game, depending on which faction you side with. How wrong I was! After some googling I found out that there are only 2 endings (Good universe or Bad universe). It doesn't even matter which faction in the game you side with. None of these factions "ascend" with you or help you. I don't know where I got that idea from. When I sided with the TRang I expected a TRang ending. Likewise an Umpani ending, a Rapax ending, a Rattkin ending, and whatever. But no - there are no such endings. My mind was playing tricks on me... my memory flawed.

- Lastly I found the idea of the Astral Dominae, Destinae Dominus, Chaos Moliri interesting from a philosophical point of view (did not care about that so much in earlier walkthroughs). It actually sounds reasonable for a "creation concept".

 

[calgary.alberta]

This close to giving up Wizardry IV, just landed on the land of a thousand cuts level 8, and I'm not sure this is something I want to play.

 

[octavius]

That level is da landmine.

 

[calgary.alberta]

figuring that out, but it's the encounters are just eating me alive

 

[Eggs is eggs]

Wizardry IV is the expert scenario. I believe they had a D&D style mentality with the series at first. Everyone would be expected to buy the first scenario as if it were the basic players guide and then they would release various scenarios after that. #2 was for high level characters, #3 was for anyone who had the first scenario and then #4 was for players who wanted a challenge.

Roe R Adams and co wanted to make the most hardcore and difficult RPG ever created and it may still hold the title after 31 years. Gotta respect them for putting out a product with virtually zero commercial viability. Robert Sirotek and the rest of the suits were not happy with that one.

 

[No Great Name]

After a long time of not playing, I finally found the time and continued where I left off from before which was wrapping up Floor 3. From Floor 3, I went down the stairs to begin mapping Floor 4 which was mostly straightforward except for those scary encounters I had with Gas Dragons for the first time. Other than those guys, the other encounters have gotten a lot less dangerous ever since I started having my spellcasters use crowd control spells instead of just going straight damage while my fighter and samurai clobber through everything. After mapping everything I could from here I realized that I've only really gotten the perimeter of the map and figured that there had to be more to the floor considering I hadn't even found the elevator yet. After trying to see if there were any fake walls that I could push myself through (I keep forgetting this isn't like Might and Magic 1), I settled for returning to the 3rd floor and getting on the elevator there to the 4th floor. As I thought, this took me to the central section of map. After setting an alarm and dealing with a gas dragon/dragon fly combo encounter that nearly left everyone dead with their overlapping breath attacks, I entered the monster allocation room without knowing what was on the other side.

I was immediately ambushed by a group of fighters, mages, priests, and a single "man in kimono" as the game called it. On their free first turn, my fighter was decapitated instantly and I thought the worst would happen. Fortunately, I was able to silence the priests and put the mages to sleep while the rest of my party killed the rest of them without much issue. The encounter itself ended up playing out pretty nicely for me except for that very first surprise attack. Afterwards, I found Trebor who I guess decided till now to tell us what our quest is all about (although the manual tells you as much anyways) and grants us access to the express elevator with the blue ribbon.

I still have a feeling that there's more to Floor 4 than what I have mapped, but I'm not entirely sure since there are still empty areas on my map. If I have, then I plan to move onto floor 5 and continue my quest.

 

[theSavant]

I'm usually not taking Recruitable Characters with me, because they won't go everywhere. Not even Vi or RFS-81. But according to some website there are 3 characters which go everywhere with you:

- Drazic (Trang) & Rodan (Umpani) as long as you don't finish the Alliance Quest.
- Sexus (Rapax Mage) as long as you stay a Templar. Now this could be funny, because it reminds me you can also recruit Trynnies. So you put a Rapax in your party and then a Trynnie. 2 sworn enemies. Though I doubt that the game will show any interesting dialogue between. I guess it just works...

Btw. I really like some parts of the underwater area. It feels like you're in an entirely different area... protected from the brutalities on the surface... surrounded by warm tropical water... a gently wobbling viewport creating a relaxed atmosphere... really cosy...

 

[No Great Name]

Tragedy struck this session.

I began exploring Floor 5 by taking the stairs down from the previous floor and traveling in a clockwise direction along the perimeter. There were a lot of twists and turns, but very few encounters that weren't particularly dangerous. My party reached all the way around the the area near the elevator on the southern part of the map when they ran into a group of Gas Dragons (fuck these guys) who kept on putting my party to sleep and using hard hitting breath attacks. My party barely managed to vanquish them and ran out of healing sources. I decided to turn back and return to the surface but unfortunately on the way, was surprised by a random encounter with some Dragon Puppies. These guys hit really hard on their free turn and when the smoke cleared, 4 of party members were dead. After failing to run on the next turn, the remaining 2 promptly bit the dust.

I put together a makeshift party using the characters that come with the game by default whom I've never used before and tried to use them in order to recover the corpses of my main party. Unfortunately I realized too late the I needed the Blue Ribbon in order to use the express elevator or a Bear Statue in order to reach the stairs to the 5th floor. I foolishly decided to try to return to Trebor to obtain another Blue Ribbon and learned the hard way that the mixed party of fighters, mages, priests, and samurai was a fixed encounter. Not only that but they surprised my party once again and experienced deja vu as the enemy opened up with a decapitation. My impromptu party didn't stand a chance and also died shortly after.

I decided to change my strategy and created a party of 3 Fighters and 3 Priests in order to obtain the Bear Statue, for which I first needed the Silver Key but that was the easy part. There was a single fixed encounter right behind the door in the hallway right before where you get the Bear Statue that I had to deal with, but it was much more manageable than the one on the 4th floor. After leveling this party up a bit, I got the statue I needed, dropped the Priests off at the Inn, and took the 3 Fighters on 2 trips all the way to the 5th floor to recover the bodies of my main party. From here it was just a matter of resurrecting everyone which wasn't a big deal since I had plenty of money and high Vitality stats. Everyone was successfully resurrected except for my Samurai who unfortunately had to be permanently buried. RIP. I ended up promoting one of the Fighters from before to my main party and I will continue mapping Floor 5 the next time I play.

 

[RatTower]

I just started my first playthrough of Wiz6 and I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with the amount of content.
I'm ~11 hours in and I didn't have a minute of grinding or some other stale gameplay loop.

I'm just wondering: How are people soloing these games?
I get that you'll probably need a character with 18 or more BP at creation, but even then it seems pretty tough to avoid death.

 

[gman42]

Soloing is a PITA and has a weird difficulty curve. Basically there's just a shitton of savescumming early on as you have to get lucky against all but the very weakest enemies to survive battles, but getting 6x the experience levels you up really quick, and before you know it, you're overleveled for the area you're in and it kinda stays that way throughout the game. Very high levels will eventually make you virtually immune to spells and criticals, so even if you lack firepower, you'll wind up as a character who stands there yawning and filing his nails while the enemy takes their turn.

Obviously some classes are way easier than others to solo with, if you don't have Ninjutsu/Stealth it's a lot tougher but I don't think there's any class that's unworkable, unless you intentionally fuck yourself out of equipment by creating a faerie fighter or something.

Wiz6 isn't really solo friendly, I think it actually doesn't let you start with fewer than 2 characters (or if it does it crashes when you try to drink from a fountain or something, I forget which) and the undroppable items would make it a CC nightmare anyway. Starting with two chars and killing one off immediately and letting its corpse carry all the junk kind of solves both problems, but it would annoy me seeing him there all game.

 

[Spiky]

I started applying bug fixes for DOS W7 using Patch Manager and realized that 2 of them are somehow not applied - Weapon's double damage and Monster's double damage, both modifying file scenario.dbs. For all other patches the icon turned green after clicking button Apply Selected Patch, but these two did not. Then when I pressed the button again, icon turned green, but I saw that scenario.dbs file has not been modified. However, when exiting Cosmic Forge, I was asked to save changes before exit in that very file. After accepting the dialogue, changes were indeed applied to the file - but who knows if it was done in a correct way.

Is there any issue on my side or is it supposed to work like this?