Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[Admiral jimbob]

Hmm, for some reason, my new ninja - despite having 100 oratory - keeps having spells fizzle out or backfire. I've grinded him up to level 15 or so, why the fuck can't he reliably cast magic missile? Is there some innate disadvantage to casting with a non-caster class?

Also, in his shop, I was leaving the area and figured he wouldn't come in useful again glad I did, damn good weapon.

Anyway, the funhouse was just fucking ridiculous. A mix of trial and error and utterly bizarre pseudo-logic does not a good dungeon make. Ah well, onwards, think I'm nearing the endgame.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Aaaand done.

Well, semi-done. Time to begin preparing a party/items to transfer to Wizardry 8. The general impressions I'm getting:

1. Few useful/powerful items transfer, nothing that will do more than give you an edge in the beginning few hours?

2. I can't find much about how classes/levels reset - I'll be changing up my classes a lot from my Wiz7 endgame party, and I'm wondering how high I should bother levelling them in their "new" classes before transferring?

3. Multiclassing in Wizardry 8 isn't as good an idea, so I should (more or less) think of six classes to stick with for most of the game rather than the 6-7 chopping and changing method?

Anyway, was a damn good game. I'm actually slightly torn as to which I prefer between it and 6; I really love the simplicity of Wizardry 6, the pure dungeon crawling factor - which is strange, because I generally like my dungeons to be broken up. The utterly arcane puzzles and the need to run back and forth all over the map definitely diminished my enjoyment of 7 in parts, it sometimes felt like certain obstacles were placed there purely to get you to phone the helplines. I don't care if having to try every single item you might or might not even have on every activator in the dungeon only to discover that you're actually meant to flash your cock at the outside west wall at the break of dawn to progress is part of the appeal of old-school RPGs, it's not really what I'm playing them for. The puzzles in Wizardry 6 struck a good balance between being tough and making fucking sense, so it was a bit sad that they seemed to lose that. Ah well. I also felt that the balance was a bit lost in the late game; in 6, my casters and fighters were of about equal use even right to the end, with utility spells like weaken, slow and blinding flash never losing their usefulness. By comparison, magic in late-game 7 just didn't hold a candle to the kind of damage a samurai with light sword/Pandora's wand, a Lord with Excaliber or a bare-fisted ninja could dish out every round, and non-damaging spells (other than buffs) seemed entirely ineffectual. Bit disappointing, if somewhat refreshing to see an RPG where the melee characters kick ass in the endgame. Other than those niggles, it was an incredibly enjoyable and memorable adventure, and it's amazing how much they managed to progress from 6 in so little time. Let's see how Wizardry 8 holds up.

 

[kmonster]

Which levels did your characters reach at the end ?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Mid-late 30s. Tried taking on the Gorrors, but if the Beast with a Thousand Eyes and the Fiend of Nine Worlds are even possible without being level 100/everyone having ninjutsu, I can't see it

 

[Fowyr]

Congratulations on finishing one of the best CRPGs ever.
BTW, you should kill Fiend of the Nine Worlds easily, I remember killing him with my 15-20 level party.
But Beast of the 1000 eyes is another case. I remember killing it, but I had two Bat Necklaces and shitton of luck.

 

[kmonster]

My party defeated the beast of 1000 eye at level 27-28, the fiend of nine worlds at even lower levels, your party should be able to do so too. It's definitely less masochistic than trying to solve the so called "riddles" in the game yourself.

 

[dr. one]

Congratulations for finishing the game!
As Fowyr, I also think it´s one of the best out there. A very complete dungeon crawl-y package.
Pity the competing parties concept didn´t stick.
Compared to 6 or 8 it is indeed a bit too difficult for its own good in the puzzle department.
Wizardry 8 should be smooth sailing in this regard, though there may be case or two of potentially rage inducing "puzzles".
And yeah, multiclassing in W8 generally isn´t a good idea. There are some powergame-y possibilites to switch to another class for one level and in few cases switching class entirely after getting to higher levels is viable (for bards, for example), but generally it´s only beneficial for smaller parties (1-3).

BTW, you should kill Fiend of the Nine Worlds easily, I remember killing him with my 15-20 level party.

Yep, I also remember killing Fiend with a relatively low level party (21-23), though the only survivor was faerie ninja with cane, eh (maybe due to the fact half of the party never changed class).
Iirc, stuff like armormelt, superman and ninja in the hiding were most helpful.
The same result with Beast, though that was quite significantly more difficult.
The ninja ended the game 7-8 level above everyone else .

Definitely less masochistic than trying to solve the so called "riddles" in the game yourself.

Playing without a walkthrough could lead to a lot of memorable results though.
Like when for some inexplicable reason I dropped ?Bo? right where I found it in the Munkharama dungeon for the lack of inventory space, without even identifying it (probably thinking it´s a weapon I won´t need) which consequently led to futile attempts at traversing the seas loaded with hv. staminas, or finally reaching the fucking Astral Dominae chamber only to find out I can´t do anything there since it totally didn´t occur to me to type "Vi Domina" into certain computer, etc.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Right, rough Wizardry 8 party:

Mook Ninja - I'm told that a Ranger is almost a necessity in Wiz8, but he'll be bringing the scouting skill with him anyway, right? What else do they get?
Felpurr Samurai
Dwarf Lord
Human female Bard
Faerie Mage
Elf Bishop (probably focused on healing)

Probably not going to change it much or at all, doubt the game'll be much harder than 6 or 7 and I've been happy with my crew so far. Just wondering how that looks, really.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Right, rough Wizardry 8 party:

Mook Ninja - I'm told that a Ranger is almost a necessity in Wiz8, but he'll be bringing the scouting skill with him anyway, right? What else do they get?.

According to this link
http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/flamestr ... es_w8.html
only Rangers will bring over the scouting skill

Rangers aren't really necessary, they just cut down on the tedium of searching for hidden items all the time (extra walking around).

 

[mediocrepoet]

In Wiz 8 each class gets a special feature that no other classes have. Rangers get auto-search, so it's always on when you run around instead of having to manually search.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Apparently I can just cast detect secrets instead. Works for me.

Also, switching the ninja out for a monk, since I want to continue with him as a melee fighter and ninjas don't seem very good in that role anymore. Yes mondblut I can feel your delicious anger

 

[Fowyr]

Gadgeteer was pretty fun.

 

[Crooked Bee]

(We have no dedicated Wiz series thread, so I thought I'd post this here.)

A question re: Wizardry 4. Does anyone know if there's any significant difference between the Apple II and DOS versions of the game? I only played the DOS version, but now I'm willing to replay the game, so maybe I should give the Apple II one a try?

EDIT. From what I've been able to find out, in the original Apple II version Trebor's ghost follows you in real-time, whereas in the DOS port his movement is turn-based. That kind of increased challenge is enough reason, I think, to go for the Apple version. Not sure if there are any other differences, though.

 

[octavius]

Do any of you Wizardry geeks remember the names of those two Giant brothers in Bane of the Cosmic Forge?
Klaus and Fritz or something like that?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Yeah, Fritz and Klaus.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I forgot how good a dungeon the monastery was

edit: survived Arnika Road!

 

[Admiral jimbob]

okay I'm kind of in two minds about the fact that every repetitive trip to the corner shop involves organising a massive back-to-the-wall military campaign

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Yeah this game drags a little haven't been playing much, just made it to Trynton, but tbh so far I'm not enjoying it as much as 6 and 7.

 

[Wyrmlord]

but tbh so far I'm not enjoying it as much as 6 and 7.

It's weird, isn't it?

For me, I first look at old games, and think, "Nah, that looks inaccessible, I'd prefer to try the newer versions of the same game first." All the same, after playing both the old version and the new version, I realize that I am much more relaxed and comfortable with the older version than I am with the boring, slow, and clunky new version.

It's a general pattern that you may or may not have also experienced.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I definitely know what you mean; often, I'll throw myself into the older versions first because I feel like I wouldn't be able to go back to them. But when I do that and get to the newer versions... Might and Magic 6 and Wizardry 8 are probably the best examples. I can't help but think about how, in Might and Magic 3, it took me ten minutes to get wherever I was going. Even if there were tough battles along the way, they were resolved quickly and decisively by one party or another. In M&M6, I found myself staring at a huge, bleak wasteland dotted with enemy parties that I knew would take hours to wade through. Moving up to Wizardry 8 was a similar experience. That said, I ended up loving M&M6, just in a different way; now that I'm off the fabled and feared Arnika Road, Wizardry 8 is hinting that it might come together.

It makes me wonder at people like Rock Paper Shotgun commenters (stretching the definition of "people"?) who disdain the old tile-based movement system as clunky, a relic of the times and something they can't bring themselves to go back to. Clunky-feeling it may be, but it took me a total of about an hour to get used to. From there, I loved it, and I've had far less patience for modern games since. Every time I have to wander far to get somewhere, a voice in the back of my head is going "you'd have been there three hours ago if the game had tiles". I'm getting old, time is at a premium

 

[Wyrmlord]

Whenever I play Wizardry 6 or Might and Magic 3-5, I find myself quickly snapping at the keys - arrow keys for movement and all the hotkeys for combat moves. My hand never leaves the keyboard to reach for the mouse. A front-right-front-left-front-about-turn in a tile game takes an instantaneous three seconds, while with mouselook and WASD, it somehow feels labourious.

It took me 3 hours to finish the first MM6 town and the nearby area, but 15 minutes to finish multiple far more substantial locations in MM3-5.

Old games are wonderful for college students with little time to spare, since they can just spend 15 minutes in clearing out two dungeons. On the other hand, newer games such as MM6 are so time demanding that a glorious 20-hour game becomes an 80-hour marathon.

Another comparison: Fallout and KotOR have roughly equal amount of content, but KotOR takes longer by virtue of being a WASD game.

 

[mondblut]

True that. The mythical uberlength of ye olde games is vastly overestimated. Most of the goldbox games, for example, can easily be completed under 10-15 hours. At one point I've completed Champions of Krynn (or was it Death Knights?) and Gateway to SF back to back in under 3 days. I wasn't doing much else these 3 days though.

Then late 90s came and said, "let's make our games longer, how? umm... how about making movement 10 times slower? brilliant! one variable changed and our games are instantly 10 times as big".

(okay, I can suppose they weren't as blazing quick back in 386 days still... )

 

[kmonster]

Then late early 90s came and the genius David W. Bradley said, "let's make our games longer, how? umm... how about making movement resting 10 times slower? brilliant! one variable changed and our games are instantly 10 times as big".

fixed.

Older games aren't generally faster paced than newer games, no newer game designer would dare to artificially lengthen game playing time as much like Bradley did in Wizardry 7 for example.

The main reason why clearing areas in MM6 takes so long is that it's a huge game with huge areas and lots of monsters. 3 hours are still quite fast for exploring and clearing a town, in Wizardry 7 you'd be occupied 30 hours with random encounters doing the same.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Resting was slow in Wizardry 7? DOSBox and I don't know what you mean.

Also, game is improving considerably as I work my way through Trynton/Rat areas.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Can I still use bard instruments if I change my bard to a gadgeteer? Thinking of changing her to one in the late game, but if not, that might sway me.