Wizardry Dabbling in Wizardry 8, want to dive in

[General_Norris]

I made it through Arnika Road with only one casuality. I was ganged by screeching bats which kept spamming fear attacks while I tried to cut down the horde of "Man". So far the thoughest battle I've faced with the exception of the apparition I triggered in a chest and that I luckily killed through divine intervention.

BTW, dos anyone know if Wizardry 8 has a screenshot function?

 

[Zombra]

BTW, dos anyone know if Wizardry 8 has a screenshot function?

Yeah, I believe that PrScr will send a terrible low quality jpg right to the main game folder. Don't quote me.

 

[gestalt11]

Solo the game with Ninja Faerie.

 

[General_Norris]

Yeah, I believe that PrScr will send a terrible low quality jpg right to the main game folder. Don't quote me.

It does! It's pretty good, actually.

And I do have a Ninja Faerie just because you guys keep talking about it.

 

[Zombra]

Eh, the Ninja Faerie thing is overrated. There's one very good weapon for only that class/race combo that you won't find without a walkthrough, that's pretty much it. If you're playing normally I find it to be a pretty weak character. YMMV.

 

[DraQ]

6) Any tips to deal with the bandits? I didn't expect them to be so tough because I beat a group of them early on and the level warning just said it was a "fair fight".

I'm late to the thread, but I just want to stress one thing: status effects. DraQ briefly touched on it, but inflicting status issues on your enemies is supremely key in W8 combat. If you have your mage casting damage spells, you're doing it wrong; you should be casting sleep spells, web, insanity, blindness, whatever group or area effect spells you can muster. A terrifying dozen bandits bearing down on you with stilettos sharpened become a laughing stock when half of them are blind and another third of them are magically terrified.

Damage spells are useful as softeners for large crowds, to kill swarms of low HP monsters or to help damage a particularly resilient foe.
However, most of the time your caster has something better to do - an enemy with 1HP hits as hard as an undamaged one, one that is paralyzed doesn't hit at all (and is hit for bonus +1x damage by melee).
Plain damaging spells are just something to default to when everything else has been cast, most of the time.

As for the screenshots I prefer using an external program (Wiz8 overwrites its screenshots on next run) and don't remember the key.

Solo the game with Ninja Faerie.

GTFO.
Soloing Wiz8 isn't half as entertaining as playing with a party (no banter, no formation management) and would suck even more on the first playthrough.
If you want extra fun you can always ironman.

I never tried wiz8 in ironman, because you would basically have to restart at least several times from point A just to get past Gregor, who is tough fuck even with party that has couple of tanks in it.

This is not true. I play Expert Ironman almost exclusively, and don't think I have ever had Gregor fully wipe my party. Yes, he manages to kill one party member about half the time, and occasionally he even kills two or three. Then he runs out of stamina and dies with a whimper. And if he did manage to kill someone, hey, that's why you have Resurrection Powders.

This. And there is always the GTFO option when you're getting your ass handed to you.

Expert Ironman can be horribly frustrating, but it's not because of Gregor. It's because of motherfucking Arnika Road fuck shit goddamn I got cornered by a group of Piercer Modai and their Sorceress artillery AGAIN fuck yoooouuuuu.

Arnika Road is manageable. It's when you run into high level caster mob and/or get cocky that the TPK happens.

 

[DraQ]

Eh, the Ninja Faerie thing is overrated. There's one very good weapon for only that class/race combo that you won't find without a walkthrough

You may find it normally unless RNG is unkind, but you do need to attack a non-hostile NPC for that (although there is a legitimate reason why you might want to do that) and it isn't *guaranteed* to drop.
Other than the weapon there is no mechanical reason to play Faerie Ninja - in no small part thanks to bullshit Str and Vit reqs.

 

[General_Norris]

By the way, I feel I might be trying to turn too many of my characters into jack-of-all-trades, for example, my priest invested in several schools of Magic which I'm told is not a good thing to do. Is it really a bad thing? Should I have focused each character in just 2 things and ignore everything else?

 

[Zombra]

By the way, I feel I might be trying to turn too many of my characters into jack-of-all-trades, for example, my priest invested in several schools of Magic which I'm told is not a good thing to do. Is it really a bad thing? Should I have focused each character in just 2 things and ignore everything else?

Eh, do what you want - even on Expert, the game is not so unforgiving that you can't win with unspecialized characters. As long as you have a few decent skill points in whatever you're trying to do, the learn-by-doing system will keep your skills advancing to passable levels. For example, if my Sword expert Fighter finds a nice axe, I equip the axe and start putting points in Axe skill and it works out fine. Of course a specialized character will perform better, but it's not 'specialize or die'.

As for spell schools, I guess the thing to keep in mind is that some spells work at any level and others don't. Casting Acid Splash 2 at a high level monster will still do a little damage, but Terror 2 will simply have no effect and be worthless. You want to be casting Terror 6 or 7 to make it even worth trying. So figure out which "all or nothing" spells you want to work reliably, and pump up those skills.

 

[gestalt11]

Eh, the Ninja Faerie thing is overrated. There's one very good weapon for only that class/race combo that you won't find without a walkthrough, that's pretty much it. If you're playing normally I find it to be a pretty weak character. YMMV.

Oh that wasn't an off the cuff type thing you really can solo the game with a Ninja Faerieif you know what you are doing, in fact i have done it to mmm 50% through (I kinda lost steam but I still have the saves !). I went to the, um, what are the demon guys called again? That area. Absolutely do not do it on the first playthrough, though.

 

[Ashenai]

I went on a soloing jag a while back where I tried to solo Wizardries 6-8. It was a dumb idea, not because it's hard (although it is very hard), but because it is stupendously dull. You lose almost all of the tactical nuance, almost everything that makes combat and the related systems interesting in those games.

 

[TigerKnee]

A lot of solo runs like Ninja Fairy is basically abusing the way Stealth is broken.

But what Ashenai said (about it being boring and dull as fuck)

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

First, sorry if creating a whole thread for this is not proper etiquette.

After some time fiddling with the first Wizardry games, I decided to sit down and play Wizardry 8 instead because the concensus is that it's the best (or at least one of the best) games in the series. So I did the usual dumb stuff like toggling on Ironman and getting killed by the infamous bandits of the road the Codex warns players about.

So I'm going to try again and see if I do better this time. Some questions:

1) Is there any reason to not dump points on the same stats (Say, Strenght) until you max them?
2) My Identify spell fizzles a lot, should I risk wearing stuff I haven't identified or it's better to wait until I know what everything is?
3) Is there a real incentive to fully explore a dungeon? I'm told the game scales enemies to it doesn't seem worthwhile.
4) My mage killed herself early on and I had no way to resurrect her until I was on the road getting killed by bandits. How can I obtain some resurrections scrolls or something similar?
5) I blew up the computers in the Monastery by "overcooking" them and the glass shattered, but nothing else seemed to change. What am I missing?
6) Any tips to deal with the bandits? I didn't expect them to be so tough because I beat a group of them early on and the level warning just said it was a "fair fight".
EDIT 7) Where can I download the fast combat mod? I googled it but most of the links are dead and there seems to be at least two different ones.
EDIT 8) I've played a fair bit of RPGs, but not a dungeon crawler. Should I play on Expert? What does it actually entail?

I'm really enjoying this game, didn't expect to like a dungeon crawler after so many hours of wasting my life on games filled meaningless enemies that are never a threat.

Thanks in advance

For the fast travel patch, you might do a "rar" or "zip" search to see if one is hosted online. Sometimes you turn up lucky. Just virus scan before opening.

 

[T. Reich]

By the way, I feel I might be trying to turn too many of my characters into jack-of-all-trades, for example, my priest invested in several schools of Magic which I'm told is not a good thing to do. Is it really a bad thing? Should I have focused each character in just 2 things and ignore everything else?

The viability of "Jack of all trades" strategy will vary depending on class. And for some classes it's actually not possible - for example, the Gadgeteer class doesn't have a lot of skills to develop in the first place.

In your given example, however, for any dedicated spellcaster IMO it's extremely important to develop all the magic schools at once. That's one of the core strategies for the Bishop class for example.
First off, each magic school has its own mana pool (which regens individually), and that means that spellcaster with many schools of magic can cast spells in the battle that much longer than a narrow specialist.
Secondly, each school of magic has some good spells, and given that a lot of mobs are specific-element-resistant, you will need to diversify if you want to stay useful at all times.
Of course, when you get those spells (early on, or the good ones are only high level) is a totally different thing, and IMO it's just another argument for mullti-school caster training.
My preferred method of leveling casters is such:
1. Use skill points on level up to boost the core magic discipline, but not the individual magic schools (unless you have surplus skill points to share, then boost the weakest schools). the core discipline plays major role in determining whether you can learn a new spell or not, and individual schools play minor role in that (at 1/10 the skill value IIRC), but are a major factor in determining the spell success rate in their school.
2. Use every opportunity to cast spells of each school, as often as reasonably possible. Your skills will grow fast via practice. Spells that can be cast outside of combat play a major role in that, especially in schools in which you don't have any useful combat spells yet. Don't skimp on spell levels either - a spell cast at yellow-orange level will boost your skill much better than a spell cast at green level. Plus, given their non-combat nature, such spells will not backfire in spectacular ways in the most imnopportune moments.
Early on, you will suffer somewhat from such strategy, but as the time goes, both your aptitude and mana levels will soar, and you will get a very strong and versatile multi-school caster in the end.
A word of note though - you may want to start specialising in a couple of most useful (for you) schools from the midgame onward, in order to make sure that you are strong enough to pick and use their endgame nukes when the time comes.