I just finished Wizardry 1

[Rincewind]

Fair enough, but it seems like people who play the game ironman are a small minority of Wizardry's playerbase. Even back in the 80s, everyone backed up their saves from what I've been told - even hardcore Wizardryheads like @aweigh.

Well, I recommended to play it on Iron Man "as much as you can manage". I certainly did go back to my last save on a few occasions:

- when I triggered Murphy's Ghost with my fairly novice party on level 1
- when I first encountered some dragons and they wiped out my party
- similarly, when I first encountered the fixed "test" encounter on level 4, which resulted in a total party wipe

Other than that, if at least half of my party is still alive, I don't reload. There's a continuum between 100% Iron Man and savescum after every battle (well, you can't do that in this game anyway).

 

[octavius]

I think Iron Man is only realistic in 1, 2 and 8.

 

[Covenant]

5 is fine with Ironman, so long as you don't go into the Playhouse.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Fair enough, but it seems like people who play the game ironman are a small minority of Wizardry's playerbase. Even back in the 80s, everyone backed up their saves from what I've been told - even hardcore Wizardryheads like @aweigh.

Well, I recommended to play it on Iron Man "as much as you can manage". I certainly did go back to my last save on a few occasions:

- when I triggered Murphy's Ghost with my fairly novice party on level 1
- when I first encountered some dragons and they wiped out my party
- similarly, when I first encountered the fixed "test" encounter on level 4, which resulted in a total party wipe

Other than that, if at least half of my party is still alive, I don't reload. There's a continuum between 100% Iron Man and savescum after every battle (well, you can't do that in this game anyway).

Well..... you can with DosBox-X. In a way you could in pure DOS by copying several of the save.cfg or data (forget what its called) as backups in a different directory. You die, delete and overwtite (an annoying process and there was probably a better way. UGE could be used I guess, but I never really bothered to figure it out for wizardry, much less make a module. Probably exists, I guess.

 

[Rincewind]

Well..... you can with DosBox-X. In a way you could in pure DOS by copying several of the save.cfg or data (forget what its called) as backups in a different directory. You die, delete and overwtite (an annoying process and there was probably a better way. UGE could be used I guess, but I never really bothered to figure it out for wizardry, much less make a module. Probably exists, I guess.

I'm playing the C64 (well, C128) version, so I just make a copy of the scenario disk periodically (or in the middle of a losing battle, that's still fine if you haven't lost the battle yet). Or you can just reset the emulated machine, then "restart an out party" from the utilities menu.

 

[Aurora]

Playing this game on Iron Man is the only way to play it. You're supposed to be careful and draw good maps or else your party gets killed off and you start over again. If you play properly and build a high hit-point team, you won't be surprised and killed off by anything.