Wizardry Wizardry 8 - surviving high level mobs

[Hobo Elf]

You could just try sprinting through to the end while in combat.

I will try that.

Examining the spell list, I think I will replace the Mage with an Alchemist. The spells Chameleon or Set Portal/Return to Portal seem to make life a lot easier.

Alchemist is a good class. They have some good AoE damage potential and they can mix valuable potions to make you enough money to buy all the best items available in Arnika. This will help give you an edge in the early game.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

You could just try sprinting through to the end while in combat.

I will try that.

Examining the spell list, I think I will replace the Mage with an Alchemist. The spells Chameleon or Set Portal/Return to Portal seem to make life a lot easier.

You could also get someone with access to Psionic spellbook since it gives you access to Insanity and Terror spells, which make fights with large groups of tanky enemies much more manageable.

 

[Old Hans]

I remember playing this game and there was some fight in a volcano area with a big group of beast men or something, and it was the most boring fights in gaming history. I went into a coma for a year. Doctors told me it was one of the biggest medical mysteries they ever came across

 

[Invictus]

Delaying levels is very simple; level gains are not tied to skills so you can have a character with several levels but very poorly developed skills other than their main weapon or magic skill thus you have a gimped character on the long run... so you delay leveling up so your character can be more developed skills and make sure they are ready for the tougher battles at higher levels
It is kind of meta gaming but frankly on par to what I have done with earlier Wizardry game to make sure my character develop how I wanted them
You might think it is retarded I guess then DraQ, Octavious, Mond Blut and others like me are retarded and you undoubtedly are the god of gaming you believe yourself to be

The question is, why are you doing this?

Wiz 8 is significantly easier than previous ones and there is absolutely no need for level squatting. I don't consider myself a pro - I rarely play cRPGs these times and e.g Wiz 7 totally kicks my ass and always leads to rage quit. Wiz 8 I finished on normal and expert, without any metagaming knowledge though, which means it's easy enough if you know what you're doing.

I have no idea why would anyone do this - guess there are two angles:
1. Powergaming one - you get a hard on while fighting rattkins in Trynton with your lvl 6 fighters having 100s in sword and close combat.
2. Wimp one - you level squat because you're afraid of tougher mobs that start appearing after certain threshold. You know, like you're one of those people advising not to hit lvl 5 before Arnika road.

Delaying levels is very simple; level gains are not tied to skills so you can have a character with several levels but very poorly developed skills other than their main weapon or magic skill thus you have a gimped character on the long run... so you delay leveling up so your character can be more developed skills and make sure they are ready for the tougher battles at higher levels
It is kind of meta gaming but frankly on par to what I have done with earlier Wizardry game to make sure my character develop how I wanted them
You might think it is retarded I guess then DraQ, Octavious, Mond Blut and others like me are retarded and you undoubtedly are the god of gaming you believe yourself to be

The question is, why are you doing this?

Wiz 8 is significantly easier than previous ones and there is absolutely no need for level squatting. I don't consider myself a pro - I rarely play cRPGs these times and e.g Wiz 7 totally kicks my ass and always leads to rage quit. Wiz 8 I finished on normal and expert, without any metagaming knowledge though, which means it's easy enough if you know what you're doing.

I have no idea why would anyone do this - guess there are two angles:
1. Powergaming one - you get a hard on while fighting rattkins in Trynton with your lvl 6 fighters having 100s in sword and close combat.
2. Wimp one - you level squat because you're afraid of tougher mobs that start appearing after certain threshold. You know, like you're one of those people advising not to hit lvl 5 before Arnika road.

Very simple, I learned to play Wizardry since Bane of the Cosmic Forge and you had to keep an eye on those skills since the beginning if I wanted to switch to other clases... so yeah maybe it is a bit of overkill to micromanage things so much but I simply enjoy it; so few games nowadays allow the level of depth these systems have

 

[Piotrovitz]

Very simple, I learned to play Wizardry since Bane of the Cosmic Forge and you had to keep an eye on those skills since the beginning if I wanted to switch to other clases... so yeah maybe it is a bit of overkill to micromanage things so much but I simply enjoy it; so few games nowadays allow the level of depth these systems have

But in Wiz 8 you do not switch classes (except few single builds like Priest 1>Lord X or Bard 18>Fighter X etc), so why the level squatting? What do you have to micromanage here?

No offense bro, I just try to understand your way of thinking here, especially that you sounded very offended in your previous post.

 

[Invictus]

Very simple, I learned to play Wizardry since Bane of the Cosmic Forge and you had to keep an eye on those skills since the beginning if I wanted to switch to other clases... so yeah maybe it is a bit of overkill to micromanage things so much but I simply enjoy it; so few games nowadays allow the level of depth these systems have

But in Wiz 8 you do not switch classes (except few single builds like Priest 1>Lord X or Bard 18>Fighter X etc), so why the level squatting? What do you have to micromanage here?

No offense bro, I just try to understand your way of thinking here, especially that you sounded very offended in your previous post.

No offense taken, maybe you are projecting yourself a bit and maybe you should read a bit more carefully my previous post where I simply enjoy doing all the micromanaging of skills and levelups to switch classes at my leisure is that justification enough for you?

 

[Desiderius]

I feel like I had Mage -> Sam, Alch -> Ninj, and Psi -> Monk or am I misremembering?

Bard is the one thing you kind of need early and Saxx doesn't really cut it, and I played Gadgeteer since unique to this game as well. Not many gadgets early but the ones you have are solid.

 

[JDR13]

Bard is the one thing you kind of need early and Saxx doesn't really cut it, and I played Gadgeteer since unique to this game as well. Not many gadgets early but the ones you have are solid.

No need to have both of those in the same playthrough. A lot of the gadgets have the same or similar effects as the Bard's instruments.

 

[Desiderius]

Not the same, no. I seem to recall them being complimentary with Gadgeteer being a little underwhelming compared to Bard at least until late.

They both save your casters Spell Points by handling some of the buffing and then helping nuke the infinite Rapax late.

 

[Desiderius]

http://www.jeffludwig.com/wizardry8/gadgetlist.php

Bard list there too.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I feel like I had Mage -> Sam, Alch -> Ninj, and Psi -> Monk or am I misremembering?

Bard is the one thing you kind of need early and Saxx doesn't really cut it, and I played Gadgeteer since unique to this game as well. Not many gadgets early but the ones you have are solid.

You could start out as a level 1 Mage and then class into Sam at level 2. This will give you earlier access to spells, but apart from extreme min-maxing, it's not necessary. You don't have to mutli class in Wiz8 at all and the only reason you'd want to do it if you min-max (again, Priest 1 > Lord 2 if you wanna play a Lord and have earlier access to spells). Perhaps the most common multi is Bard > Fighter as someone already mentioned ITT, but this comes from an errenous understanding that Bards have a hard cap and after X level it's better to go Fighter, which isn't true. If you want a more melee oriented Bard then this is the way to go, but Instrument effectiveness keeps scaling up with your Bard level, so there's no reason not to just keep leveling a Bard if all you want to do is toot at enemies.

 

[Piotrovitz]

No offense bro, I just try to understand your way of thinking here, especially that you sounded very offended in your previous post.
No offense taken, maybe you are projecting yourself a bit and maybe you should read a bit more carefully my previous post where I simply enjoy doing all the micromanaging of skills and levelups to switch classes at my leisure is that justification enough for you?

I fully understand where are you coming from, but seriously, in Wiz 8 there's not much to micromanage, and as for the class changing - beside couple of examples thrown here (i.e starting as a pure class and switch to hybrid at lvl 2, to bump up his casting skills faster) - you do not swap classes mid-game. Unless you're rolling with some wonky builds, like FGT 10/SAM X or whatever.

As for the Bard class change - I always do it the other way around.
Start as a FGT, to bump up sword/shield/close combat, and on lvl 2 swap to Bard.

Didn't know about music skill effectiveness scaling with level, but the main reason I do that is that I want to keep all the bard-only stuff, like full set of armor that gives you shitload of attribute bonuses (Caliban cuirass +10 STR/+12 iron skin, Oberon graves +10 SPD, Flynn's cap +10 SEN/+30% earth res, Prospero's cloak +20 INT/+10% water res, Thieve's buckler +10 SPD). Add on top of that ring of the road with +20 STR and ankh of speed, give her Bloodlust, and you have first class front row melee, which can provide you constant magic screen and start every fight with the Haste drums. Plus can also hit hard.

As for the instruments vs gadgets - I think the gadgets are more there to cover up the Priest spells (armourplate, heal, superman, resurrection, guardian angel) and couple of alchemist high tier spells, while instrument are mainly to cover mage/psionic spells.

 

[Desiderius]

What changed in 8 to make multiclassing less appealing?

 

[coldcrow]

What changed in 8 to make multiclassing less appealing?

Level thresholds don't reset if you add new classes. And you have only one active class. And class level is even more important for basically everything. There is almost nil formula in the game which doesn't use class level in some way.
The only worthwhile real multiclassing is from hybrid/bishop classes to specialist casters to cut experience reqs short.
Also popular is getting one level in a class at start for certain skill boosts/starting gear, then immediately switch to the class you want. For example Mage->Samurai. But tbh it's usually not good.

 

[Piotrovitz]

And that's a huge improvement over Wiz 7, where you can abuse multiclassing system to the point that your casters could have nuclear blast in their spellbooks before leaving New City.

Sure, it's kinda rigid and doesn't allow for any munchkinism, if you're into that, but imo it works fine.

You end up with pretty defined party that you can relate to, which voiceovers/personalities only amplify.
Instead of rolling with six fighter/ninja/priest/thief/lord/alchemist/monk clowns, where everyone is capable of anything.

 

[Desiderius]

That was more of a Faerie thing. Massive pain to pull off with other races. Wish Grimoire wasn’t so half-assed or would have been fun to play around with it there.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Grimoire also allows for multiclassing abuse, but to a lesser extent - you have only few outgoing classes that you can change to, plus it does not allow to go back to any of previous class.

That system makes the game easier, but does not break it, like in Wiz 7 case.

 

[grimer]

yea wizardry 7 even encourages class changing by dividing skill points into separate categories. so unless you want to be stuck at 40 kirijutsu for the rest of the game, class changing is pretty much mandatory for any optimal party. this also means you need to reroll several levels to satisfy class requirements and to regain lost attributes for your final class.

 

[Desiderius]

If I go Mook Fighter 1/Psionicist x I can't use Giant Sword right?

 

[Piotrovitz]

You should be - my Fighter 1/Bard X was able to use Bard-only equipment.

 

[Desiderius]

That's because you played the game as Bard. Psi1/Fighterx would be able, but not the other way around I think.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Ah, good point.

 

[Desiderius]

Eh, need to just spam spells in any case.

Elf Psionicist wastes Mental Immunity lol. Just hate Bishop.

 

[jackofshadows]

You can always avoid mobs with chameleon and/or hypnotic lure, don't forget to use run as well (some new players are unaware of this... feature).

But seeing that you're playing with full stack I'd say - don't miss random mobs except for some nasty ones like thouse poison plants or casters. As others have said - just use crevises and fight mobs by one/two at the time. It's stupid as hell but it works through out the whole game with some exceptions (depends also on your party setup - with melee party you wanna jump on casters or insects and with ranged you wanna stay as further from mobs as possible etc).

These level scaled (and on expert they're mostly if not always higher level than you) random encounters put me off at first not gonna lie but later I realised that the game essentially is all about them and slaughter in general so the better you deal with it, the better you develop your party - the more pleasure and satisfaction you derive from it.

 

[gunman]

Playing on novice / iron man at the moment, novice difficulty looks more reasonable in regards of spawned mobs and the duration of battles.