Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[DavidBVal]

Hmmm weird. Playing the PSX port of wiz 3 which has been a carbon copy in everything to the DOS game until now. But I'm doing the alignment switch in wiz 3 to be allowed in levels 3 and 5, and it does not allow me to enter them with 1 good character. If my memory is correct, you needed a majority of evil or a majority of good characters to enter the areas in the DOS version.

 

[Watser]

Hmmm weird. Playing the PSX port of wiz 3 which has been a carbon copy in everything to the DOS game until now. But I'm doing the alignment switch in wiz 3 to be allowed in levels 3 and 5, and it does not allow me to enter them with 1 good character. If my memory is correct, you needed a majority of evil or a majority of good characters to enter the areas in the DOS version.

Incorrect. I played the DOS version myself and for me, every single character had to be good/bad depending on the floor. Though that was the wizardry archives version and it may be different from the original one.

 

[Fowyr]

Pre-Bane Wizardries didn't even have skills, I think?

Wiz5 had swimming skill (raised from 1 to 16) and that's all.

 

[DavidBVal]

Hmmm weird. Playing the PSX port of wiz 3 which has been a carbon copy in everything to the DOS game until now. But I'm doing the alignment switch in wiz 3 to be allowed in levels 3 and 5, and it does not allow me to enter them with 1 good character. If my memory is correct, you needed a majority of evil or a majority of good characters to enter the areas in the DOS version.

Incorrect. I played the DOS version myself and for me, every single character had to be good/bad depending on the floor. Though that was the wizardry archives version and it may be different from the original one.

It's probably my aged brain being faulty.

Okay, my samurais are evil now... I have no idea if they will be able to level up as samurais while evil, some obscure memory from the 80s tells me they can't but I can't find it confirmed anywhere.

 

[DavidBVal]

woot I did it! Who wants a Star?

It has been longer than expected, since I took the bait and traded my Cristal of Neutrality for the stupid Orb of Mhuuzfes or whatever it's called, so I lost all the quest progression... had to switch alignment again. Quite a bit of backtrack.

Playing 1-3 in a row has been a blast. Very fun to play on the phone while on the go or in short breaks.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

On the phone? Via an emulator?

 

[DavidBVal]

On the phone? Via an emulator?

Yes, Legacy of Llylgamyn PSX version, which is an 1:1 rendition of the DOS games (I,II,III) with decent touch-friendly controls and enhanced graphics (you can go back to wireframe if you prefer). And a minimap, in case you have grown weak with age (like me).

Now I'm playing Heart of the Maelstrom on the same emulator, what a great game it is! I had never played it back in the day.

 

[Whisper]

Have you tried Oblivion? It's kinda the same as Wizardry bc of the first person view, but the gameplay and graphics are a lot better. You also have a lot more freedom to do anything you want around the world. Like you don't have to fight monsters in dungeons all the time.

Try it.

Ok, thank you for advice. Will try Oblivion instead of Wizardry.

 

[DavidBVal]

Have you tried Oblivion? It's kinda the same as Wizardry bc of the first person view, but the gameplay and graphics are a lot better. You also have a lot more freedom to do anything you want around the world. Like you don't have to fight monsters in dungeons all the time.

Try it.

Ok, thank you for advice. Will try Oblivion instead of Wizardry.

Outdated comment. Try Skyrim, it's like Oblivion but without that nerdy character sheet thingie.

On topic: DW Bradley is a fucking genius, I love Wiz 5, and it's quickly becoming my favorite of the series (haven't played 7 yet). I can't believe he ended up putting his signature in a game like Dungeon Lords. The great developers of the 80s and 90s need to become teachers and share their wisdom with young developers, instead of embarassing themselves by releasing shitty modern titles.

 

[Wayward Son]

Would a solo of Wizardry be possible? I was thinking start as a cleric, then switch to fighter, then to mage or samurai, with a possible switch to ninja or thief at the end. Would that work? I figured with 6x exp, leveling would be a cinch, so you'd get enough stat raises to pull this off. Priest for healing, fighter for health and mage/samurai for Tiltowait.

 

[DavidBVal]

Would a solo of Wizardry be possible? I was thinking start as a cleric, then switch to fighter, then to mage or samurai, with a possible switch to ninja or thief at the end. Would that work? I figured with 6x exp, leveling would be a cinch, so you'd get enough stat raises to pull this off. Priest for healing, fighter for health and mage/samurai for Tiltowait.

If you mean Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the Murphy's Ghosts pretty much allow you to build whatever you want, at the cost of losing your soul through hours of grinding. In 5 there are similar early grindable spots. People has reached levels into the hundreds.

But the problem is you're going to eventually get BADI'ed or similar. So if you use save and reload, yes, if not...

 

[DavidBVal]

Fun Wiz 5 fact: if you kill the stupid gold kettle at level 1, you gain 88K XP per character! It drops nothing. And you can then resurrect it at the temple of Cant.

It is extremely hard tho.

 

[catfood]

Quick Wizardry 6 question: do I have to identify every piece of equipment that I find (even non-descript items such as "cutlas") or can I safely sell them? Inventory juggling is hell.

 

[newtmonkey]

I always wanted to buy an Apple II, buy the first 4 Wizardries and beat them all in their original form. Not sure if that would be good to put on my bucket list, or an absolute waste of time and energy.

An Apple II is 100% worth getting if you can find a working one for cheap (I recommend the Apple IIc), and if you get a box of floppy disks and a serial-usb cable it is extremely easy to write disks from your PC. Compared to using a C64 or even Atari ST now, getting disk images on floppies to use with an Apple II from a modern PC is painless.
To be honest, I got one thinking I would play some classic RPGs on it, but it can be a pain. Some games are fine on these older computers—for example if they are on one or two disk sides. Anything more than that is extremely painful, and if you are talking about Wizardry where the game writes to the disk constantly, you will need to maintain backup disks if you want to maintain your sanity.
The other issue with playing these games on the original hardware is that, unless you get a floppy emulator or whatever, you will need to rely on cracked versions of games because there is no way to write original disks with their copy protection intact. There is no guarantee that you won't get 70% through the game and find out that the version you playing is corrupt or missed some copy protection thing.

 

[Whisper]

How to get Bat necklaces? Who drops them and what chest?

 

[Whisper]

I generally think of Wizardry 8 as of a fairly easy game if you don't make a particularly crazy party like six thieves or something like that.

I have 5 thieves and a bishop (for buffs), they just destroy everything, while enjoying highest armor (+10 AC from steal, + flack jacket and stud leg armor, + reflexion) and highest damage. Backstabs go to 3x at lvl 10+, and to 4x damage at lvl 20+.

I heard you can go to 6x damage backstabs, considering 120 STR on every thief, its will be 150+ dmg per hit.
Now i do 60-80 dmg per hit.

Who need berserking fighters for 2x dmg, when you can go to 4x or even 6x dmg with no accuracy loss.

 

[DavidBVal]

Reaching Wiz 5 ending, I felt like sharing a hint regarding char building that I wish I had known when I started.

You gain *massive* XP in this game when you reach floor 7, easily making over 2 million XP by the time you've fully explored levels 7 and 8. So it's totally feasible to level casters up to 13 to gain lvl 7 spells, then switch to samurai/lord/fighter/thief and you'll still get to level 16-18 without grinding. What you lose in exchange of all those spells is roughly one level. Plus there's that pool in lvl 7 that raises all your spell points to 9 anyways.

Damn, I don't want this game to end.

 

[Jason Liang]

Would a solo of Wizardry be possible? I was thinking start as a cleric, then switch to fighter, then to mage or samurai, with a possible switch to ninja or thief at the end. Would that work? I figured with 6x exp, leveling would be a cinch, so you'd get enough stat raises to pull this off. Priest for healing, fighter for health and mage/samurai for Tiltowait.

In Wiz 1 I often grind with a 2 man team but never solo. If you are solo, it's a party wipe if you even get paralyzed. There's so many enemies that can still destroy you, especially if you get ambushed (Flack, Vampires, even Greater Demons can paralyze on hit, and that's just level 10).

If you mean just 1 character from start to end? Goodness no, lol. Have you played Wiz 1? It's not popamole, and you don't need to make things tougher on yourself.

Finally, Wizardry 1 isn't like Wiz 7, you can't and shouldn't class change willy-nilly. Your character ages 10 years every time you class change and that affects your level ups. Your stats also get reset to your racial minimums, so it takes a long time to recover.

If you want a power party, try:

2 Lords (Mage -> Lord)
1 Ninja (Cleric -> Mage -> Thief + Dagger of Thieves into Ninja)
1 Lord (Samurai -> Lord)
2 Samurai (Cleric -> Samurai)


And you don't need to take fighter levels for health, this isn't Bioware. Wizardry basically re-rolls your class's hit dice each time you level up, and gives you the difference if it's higher than your current total. So your HP will eventually normalize to whatever it should be for your current class and level.

 

[hackncrazy]

In Wiz 5-7 you also carry your party through the games or this only happens in 1-3?

Also, I'm planning on start the SNES version of 1-3, is this feature present there?

 

[DavidBVal]

In Wiz 5-7 you also carry your party through the games or this only happens in 1-3?

Also, I'm planning on start the SNES version of 1-3, is this feature present there?

In 6 you can't import, 6-7-8 is a new series.

 

[Whisper]

I'm not sure about critical strikes being useless, you can attack ridiculous number of times with HtH.

Critical strike skill at 100 means 5% chance to crit.

Then monster rolls to avoid being critical'd.

Of cause, its quite rare.


p.s. Stiletto 10% chance is twice more effective than Critical skill at 100.

 

[Whisper]

If i heard right, Critical (Kirijutsu) in W6 means you had 20% chance to critical. Also +5% crit chance from class (ninja, monk). Total 25%.

 

[Watser]

Who is the inbred son of a whore that came up with the brilliant idea of having to press fucking [K] every single time you want to enter a door in Wizardry 5?!
Having to [K]ick down doors is just very briefly mentioned in the manual and is no way indicated in-game, I just spent an hour inspecting for hidden doors (and why the fuck did they have to change the mechanic for finding hidden doors as well?!) and using the pick command on every single shitty wall on the first level, fucking rage!

Spoiler

 

[ionic atomic]

So I'm about to pick up Wizardry 6, but having never played a Wizardry game (or any other 90s rpg for that matter), I don't know what to expect.

Does it require you to powergame or grind or savescum or some combination of those to beat the game on normal? Is it very luck based?

Reading other wiz6 threads left me with an impression that if I don't class switch I'll have to grind and reload aplenty to stay afloat. On the other hand you have to regain levels lost to reclassing. Does class switching make it less or more tedious?

I'm especially concerned with skullduggery, not sure if I can omit a thief from the party without having to resort to the reload grind technique that seems to be mentioned a lot.

Last but not least, why is the char building system so well regarded if, apparently, the best build is having everybody become some monstrosity of a fighter/mage/rogue? Is it just because it's complex?

 

[octavius]

The character system appeals to the accountant in many Wiz 6 players.

I wouldn't worry too much about class changing, since the hardest part of the game is in the beginning when it won't help you anyway.

A Thief is pretty useful, and so is a Bard due to free Sleep spell, which is a life saver in the early game. You can find keys to open all or most doors, though. If a door jams, there's no need to reload, just get back when you have the right key.

Class changing is more important in Wiz 7 due to the skill point allocation being changed from Wiz 6.