Incline Wizardry 8 Enhancements - A Call to Arms!

[Black]

I see changes to locket of reflection so that it's not sexist any more, but what about Necklace of Endurance?

Oh, and about making resistances higher for enemies which was discussed x pages ago- isn't that the same as increasing mob hp for casters, who already are kind of gimped against late game enemies with ~90 resistances on everything?

 

[Coriolanus]

I never get consistent instakill procs until somewhere around Ascension Peak (which is also when I really stock up on Medusa Stones and such)... by which time Fighter already kills most stuff in 1 turn. Bishops are powerful but a PITA if you refuse to grind skills.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yes, instakills are very satisfying when you manage to pull one off against a boss or a hogar in the first turn, but they're not consistent enough to compensate for poor dmg,

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Necklace of Endurance - an oversight, I will make it neutral too. Thanks!

And I'd actually like to decrease monster resistances to reasonable amounts, as vanilla high-level enemies are ridiculously resistant to everything. Not sure how to balance.


I'm all for a diverse party, never understood people with a party of 1 Necromancer + 4 dragons in Might & Magic VIII for example .
Bishop is a powertrainer's wonder and I think it's fine that way.

 

[theSavant]

Kaucukovnik You are right, it would be overkill and pointless. By the time this much effort is put in in porting a game one could create his own game.

 

[Black]

Was thinking about fixing Bloodlust when it comes to rogues, and something hit me. What if instead of changing the sword at all, you just change berserk to swing, not thrust? Boom, no more bonus for backstabs + berserk for rogues.
Also, thoughts on samurais? Are they up to par with other melee classes? Lightning strike is cool but it's too luck based (at least I didn't see it happen more often as my speed/dex/senses/level increased). Rogues have backstabs, warriors have berserk and heavy armour and weaponry, even monks' blind fighting > fearless.

 

[Izuela]

Things I would love to see in Wizardry 8:

• Drunken umpani recruits randomly spawning near HeLi's bar in Arnika. Have them be yellow unless you get too close. Of course, make sure these guys don't give Umpani faction hits when you kill them.
  
• Shunned t'rang spawns in the swamp. Same as the drunk umpani.
• Have poppies drop poison darts and fairy, sneeze and flash powders fairly frequently. Over all there are too many types of encounters that have no or too small of a chance to drop anything useful, which gets kinda dull.
• Rat tail , a fairy only weapon that uses mace&flail skill. Regular rat tails should be common drop of rats. But there's also the better and rarer Plagued Rat Tail (more dmg and added nausea effect). Regular and Plague can be dual wielded. Also add a Giantic 2 handed rat tail. More damage, extended range and stamina drain (still fairy only, mace&flail category).
• Bat skull helmet, a fairy plate armor head piece to go with the Zynaryx plate. Crafted by combining a bat skull (dropped by bats) with spider silk.
  
• Would also be great if something more useful could be made from the many bats, piercer modais, wasps and crabs that keep attacking your party throughout the game. Maybe daggers or throwing weapons made from their claws and teeth.
  
• Jar Lid, a shield usable by fairies of all shield using classes. Dropped of outlaws and higardi in Arnika. 2 AC, like a basic round shield, but for fairies. Make it 0.1 weight.
• Would be great if some enemy types would also attack each other. Now, sorceresses clearly keep piercer modais as pets, but I don't really see a reason for things like poppies and bats to not also attack bandits once combat starts. And things in the swamp should pretty much be trying to eat everything else. I realize this will make some battles easier, but at lease those drawn out "9 frogs + 10 millipedes + 3 slimes + 7 blood suckers" fights will end a lot faster.
• Change the Lords primary skill from dual wield to something useful. Maybe mace&flail?
• A haunted castle. You seem to be making new areas. Why not make one that is haunted (castle or mansion). Make it reachable by clicking on a boat on the beach in the swamp (the area across the river and to the left with the crashed ship parts). In some places you step the screen will start shaking at furniture will fly across the room and paintings will fall off the walls (possibly revealing hidden loot or passages) Somewhere there has got to be a modern ghost busting gun! It should be full of zombie rats, ghouls, ghosts of perished adventurers (spirits of all the playable races), skellies, Will o' Wisps (floating hostile lights) and of course slimes. Also vampires. Males wearing silly cloaks with very high collars and females wearing nightdresses and showing lots of cleavage. Glowing red eyes and fangs are a must. Possibly make the vampires friendly quest givers and vendors.

 

[Black]

No, no, we don't talk about lords. DraQ is our forum lord fangirl.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Also, thoughts on samurais?

Pros:
- great specials (bonus to the beast weapon category, great special attack, resistance to one of the most often status ailments)
- second best spellbook for a hybrid, including two great exclusive buffs that are available early
- lots of exclusive equipment, some of which is pretty great
- are both strong in dmg and have criticals
Cons:
- most squishy of all frontliners
- if you don't savescum you will miss most of their exclusive equipment, including best weapons
- two weapons slows you down early on
Conclusion: class is fine, don't change it, apart from making equipment drop changes, which is already done.

• Change the Lords primary skill from dual wield to something useful. Maybe mace&flail

Already done.

 

[DraQ]

Have poppies drop poison darts and fairy, sneeze and flash powders fairly frequently.

That could be cool. Apart from flash powder, that is.

Also, change pandemonium powder recipe to dust of defection + devil dust. More logical and would remove insane profitability.

Rat tail , a fairy only weapon that uses mace&flail skill. Regular rat tails should be common drop of rats. But there's also the better and rarer Plagued Rat Tail (more dmg and added nausea effect). Regular and Plague can be dual wielded.

I would drop the regular and giant ones (really, there is a good chance your faerie would be swinging a bullwhip almost from the start), but plague rat tail as a rare drop from all sorts of plague rats would be pretty cool - make it deal shit damage, but have almost surefire nausea and good chance to inflict disease.

Bat skull helmet, a fairy plate armor head piece to go with the Zynaryx plate. Crafted by combining a bat skull (dropped by bats) with spider silk.
Would also be great if something more useful could be made from the many bats, piercer modais, wasps and crabs that keep attacking your party throughout the game. Maybe daggers or throwing weapons made from their claws and teeth.

I also propose:
-add fuel cell (gadget component, power pack sprite and model) to the crash site outside the monastery.
-add ventilator (gadget component, uses vacuum pump sprite and model) to some desk in Arnika (jail maybe?).
-allow one to combine those into a some sort of wearable rig usable only by fairy gadgeteers that would up their carry weight considerably. (gadgeteer *needs* carry weight would make fairy gadgeteer interesting and viable).
-allow this rig to be further combined with Zynaryx plate to make a version also offering decent protection

-as an alternative allow it to be combined with port-o-potty to make upgraded version casting toxic cloud (for all the normal gadgeteers out there).

There should be some more cool shit other than gadgets that could be made by gadgeteer. For example combining a rapier with lightning rod to make a rapier with chance to KO, paralyze or instakill (stab-zap).

No, no, we don't talk about lords. DraQ is our forum lord fangirl.

I'm not. I just recognize that lords need fixing. Badly.

 

[Coriolanus]

Also, thoughts on samurais? Are they up to par with other melee classes? Lightning strike is cool but it's too luck based (at least I didn't see it happen more often as my speed/dex/senses/level increased). Rogues have backstabs, warriors have berserk and heavy armour and weaponry, even monks' blind fighting > fearless.

They're meh. No one knows what actually triggers Lightning Strike, it almost never does for me (like, 10 times per game?).

Spells are good, having an extra elemental/town portal/haste caster is always a plus. However, it's a huge pain to get to that level. You almost always never want to use the "regular" spells in lieu of normal attack, so you either grind (which is lame as hell) or gimp your melee by upgrading your spell schools/disciplines on level-up (and you're already not that strong in melee... so you'll miss a LOT of attacks if you go this route).

Samurai gear is OK but Fighter's is still better.

 

[Lukifell]

Chiming in with more random ideas, how about:

--Two or three artifact weapons, like a super good dagger that uses the artifacts skill
--Rare crystals that can be merged (using high artifact skill) with some random weapons to upgrade them
--If you give a Samurai the "Lightning Strike" special three times, will that cause him to use it more frequently?
--Make every race more distinctive and meaningful? Since cats have nine lives, Felpurr could have Cheat Death. OK, too far.

 

[TigerKnee]

Yeah, Samurais are meh. Lightning Strike is just significantly lower in power level compared to Berserk and Backstab.

And I think due to the way Wiz 8's skill system works, hybrids are just kind of penalized in comparison to single classes because sure, you MAY have access to a bigger pool of available skills, but practically speaking trying to cover them all will turn you even a gimp that can't even be called a Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

It's not like previous Wiz games where hybrid fighter/caster classes actually made you feel like it was worth using them for offensive spells, here it's just Support spells all the way.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Lighting Strike procs more often when you pump speed, which you should.

Samurai doesn't have haste. He does, however, have Enchanted Blade and Missile Shield. Both of which are awesome, unique buffs available early and also great way to train wizardry. It's basically enough to pump Wiz to 15 and then get both of the above. Later on you might also get the freezing spell and knock knock. All of these are good, low level spells that will help you level your skills quick enough without grinding.

Samurai is not in the upper tier of the classes, but it's not it the lower either. It sits somewhere in the middle.

 

[Coriolanus]

Lighting Strike procs more often when you pump speed, which you should.

Source on that?

Samurai doesn't have haste.

Figures, I haven't played Wiz 8 in forever.

It's not like previous Wiz games where hybrid fighter/caster classes actually made you feel like it was worth using them for offensive spells, here it's just Support spells all the way.

It felt like they went a bit overboard, I never used Fighters in Wiz6/7 - they had no place in the multiclassing that was the core of pimping our your party. In Wiz8 they were just the best damage class.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Source as in "manual states it"? There's no source on that, it's just what people came up with when playing. Another thing that helps triggering ls is low encumbrance.

Fighter is basically a beginner's class. They are very powerful early game, borderline broken even if you equip one with bloodlust (which I believe should be gimped or simply made available much later into the game, I never use it now), but they are also pretty boring to play and actually don't really work that well against enemies that are the biggest challenge (magic users).

And best class for raw dmg in Wiz8 is rogue, but it's also boring/broken and backstab should be limited to daggers.

 

[Coriolanus]

Not to my knowledge... this is one of the most knowledgeable sources on Wiz 8, and he says no one has a clue.

http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/jandrall/Wizardry8/SpotlightSamurai1.htm

For instance, I often get more LS procs early (when my speed is low) compared to lategame.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

You can find lots of discussions on the net where people argue that low encumbrance and hight speed gives better ls trigger rates. I tend to agree with that, I was usually going with a dex+str samurai and when I finally tried dex+spd the trigger rate did seem better.

But it's one of these things that people can only guess, like quite a few other aspects of Wiz8 mechanics.

 

[Lukifell]

You can pump a Fighter's throwing skill and a Rogue's artifacts easily enough, which gives them a small arsenal of "spells". Ice Bomb and Pandemonium Powder are very nice panic buttons mid-game... also Rocket Stix and Amulet of Healing. They don't really have too many skills to pump, at least not as many as a hybrid, especially Fighter, and can get away with dropping 3 into one of those skills every level.

 

[DraQ]

Any problems samurais may have as a class can be easily fixed by tweaking weaboo gear.

 

[Izuela]

More wishes!

• I would like LURE animation and sounds to be changed into something more pleasant. As it is now it's rather headache inducing. Change it to a hovering red balloon or something, that gently sways in the air making soft woosh and bloing noises.
• Something silly... An Ornamental Codpiece! One of those big exaggerated things that look like they can poke someones eye out, covered with jewels. Goes in misc slot. Male only, all races. Wish there was a way to make just fairies wear it as a hat, instead (I can just imagine the party going "that's... interesting, while the fairy goes "oooh, nice hat!"). Usable by fighter, lord, bard and thief. The only classes I imagine shallow enough to wear it. Have it give a +1 stamina regen, 1 ac and all elemental resistance bonus. Bonus to communication (it's a conversation starter!). But also a small negative intelligence and piety effect, because it's a vain and silly thing to wear. For added hilarity make it cursed and add this in the description "Is this a codpiece or a chastity belt?". Put it in a chest behind the wheel key door in the monastery. A cursed codpiece sounds like just the thing you would need when facing Al-Sedexus.
• Jester hat. A Bard, thief and monk head piece. Suggested stats, 2 ac, 5 int, 10 music and 10 stealth. All races. If adding music skill to items that other classes can wear messes things up, make it bard only, up the ac and drop the stealth.
  
• Cattle Prod. Engineer weapon made by combining a short staff with electrodes. Melee weapon that uses modern weapon skill, if that is possible. If not, keep it as a staff&wand and make it usable by all classes. Keep the base stats the same as short staff and add 20% stamina drain, 10% KO and 1% kill chance.

 

[Salk]

Hello!

I registered here for two main reasons:

1) To thank Kaucukovnik for his work and to ask him what his plans are for the next versions

and

2) To recommend against raising the difficulty level

I elaborate about point 2): I've never played any Wizardry game before but I do want to play it now once this modification becomes final. From what I understand, there are lots of cheap ways to crank up the difficulty. I don't enjoy a stroll in the park but I like to play my games feeling that surviving matters. This means "No reload"/"Iron Man" when I feel I stand a chance. Now... There are not so many games that I played when this is possible without cheating and I don't cheat.

From what I understand Wizardry 8 is a difficult game (although not as difficult as its ancestors). I don't think there is any need to raise the bar. A rebalancing of the difficulty would be welcome but it's always extremely difficult to find common ground. Whatever the end decision is going to be, please make it optional.

Thanks!

 

[Kaucukovnik]

If anything, be afraid of lower difficulty from me. I 'm not a fan of "extreme challenge" mods.

Plans for the future (after 1.0):
-removal or reduction of some trash mobs here and there (new areas will compensate for the loss of skill and exp)
-high-level Rapax and Savant android spawns suggesting Dominus being gradually overrun by the bad guys (so the longer you level up, the worse you can feel for letting the innocent suffer ). You could even lose significant NPCs.
-the mentioned decrease of enemy resistances from the endgame standard of "~90% to everything". It's not fair to the enemies, but it's fair to the player's sanity sometimes.
-improvements to vanilla areas as shown in the crypt beta - almost identical, but higer res textures, UV fixes, also more details to Arnika, Gigas caves and especially Ascension Peak. For the Peak I'm thinking of some ruins representing each of the three native races on Dominus. Possibly with theme-apropriate enemies. Long rocky corridors for finale are bad.

As for my locations, you can play them iron-man, but you should be very careful. Maybe backup your save before entering, so that you don't hate me.

 

[TigerKnee]

I don't mind having more difficulty in Wiz 8 if the fights were shorter. But as Wiz 8 currently is, later fights in the game aren't really hard but they're unbearably long because enemies are huge sacks of HP. If enemies were more difficult but at the same time take much less time to kill that would be preferable.

 

[Salk]

Thank you for the update, Kaucucovnik!

I don't mind the lower difficulty because it's enough to play the game at harder level to compensate, unless even at the hardest level the game becomes too easy (but I don't think that's the case for Wizardry 8). It's when the game it's extremely challenging EVEN at lowest difficulty levels that I think it's no good.

I really like the plan for future versions! The goal of reducing the time spent in endless fights is certainly appreciated - what's the point of playing tedious combat sessions if it can be helped by making them shorter?

About being careful playing your new locations: well, I strongly dislike cheap ways to die in games but I understand that not being smart enough could be fatal and I accept that. The Iron Man mode for me is a great way to play a game IF there is actually a chance for a good player to survive the adventure (ex. Temple of Elemental Evil) otherwise it's an exercise in frustration and thus not welcome.

I have created my party just yesterday but won't play until your mod is in its final stage. Really looking forward to it!