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Cardiovorax posted:Really, you can't play Wizardry 8 without having at least one of these. Agreed. Also, we need an Engineer of some variety. Their gun gets pretty OP by the end of the game and the gadgets are both useful and hilarious. Also also, Wiz 8 is one of my favorite games of all time. It's quirky and weird and the graphics are really dated by now but it's so good.
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Jul 9, 2020 17:53
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Agreed on Hybrid LP style. Combat is too frequent and takes too long (especially at early levels) to do a pure video format, but there are some portions that would benefit from video IMO.
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Jul 9, 2020 22:17
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wafflemoose posted:It's not an RPG unless we steal everything that isn't nailed down. I would avoid pickpocketing NPCs however because it never works. Also, no dedicated healer? Oof. Pickpocketing does work but you have to train it up on really blind NPCs first. There's some good stuff that you can only get by pickpocketing, and some others that you get way earlier than you're "supposed to". Also yes, lack of an actual healer is going to suck for a while. This is a late-bloomer party.
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Jul 13, 2020 17:43
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Just for the record: you do not have to choose your characters' spells when you level up. You can leave those spell selections indefinitely and spend them on higher-level, rarer spells. There are some spells in the game that this is the only reasonable way to get. Also, all the low-level spells are readily available from early loot and/or merchants.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:40
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Xander77 posted:Huh. Is Thunderscape from the same developers? Or just Wizardry 1 was one of the first, possibly the actual first (I haven't done the research to be sure), first person party-based dungeon crawler. It's generally considered the genre-defining game/series. Eye of the Beholder, Etrian Odyssey, Shining in the Darkness, etc etc all come straight from the Wizardry school of gameplay. As far as Thunderscape specifically, it looks like that was probably inspired more by Eye of the Beholder, seeing as SSI (the people who published EotB) developed it. EDIT: Doing a little more research, it looks like the original Wizardry is actually considered a strong influence on the creation of Dragon Quest I and thus Final Fantasy I as well. Apparently Yuji Horii is or was a big fan. Zurai fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jul 20, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 14:01
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I totally forgot that the original Phantasy Star was a first-person dungeon crawler.
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Jul 20, 2020 17:04
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3, both. There's little reason NOT to pick up these two now. You can always get rid of them later on when you come across better companions, and Saxx in particular will be handy to use all the bard instruments that the "real" party can't. There's a lot of useful stuff in there (including his own personal instrument, which I steal from him in games where I have a bard along).
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Jul 22, 2020 18:28
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There's also a gadget for Hypnotic Lure. I've used it a few times, it's handy for distracting multiple groups of ranged attackers for a few turns.
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Jul 23, 2020 16:30
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IIRC you can also use it out of combat so you can use it to essentially scout around corners. It's certainly not a very good spell (and it's not a gadget I keep in my very limited personal inventory space long-term), but it's got niche uses.
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Jul 23, 2020 17:45
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Buffs. There's a buff spell that greatly increases your elemental resistances that should take the bite out of their spells. You can also leave the zone and rest for several days straight (I forget the exact number) to reset the encounters.
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Jul 23, 2020 21:33
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No, unfortunately, Wiz8's implementation of widescreen is either stretching the screen or using black boxes on the side. It's terrible.
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Jul 23, 2020 23:58
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Yeah, Arnika Road sucks. Wide open (there are corners you can and should wedge yourself into, but that doesn't help when a dozen wasps pop up over the hill right on top of you), absolutely full to the brim of large enemy packs, and have way more HP than pretty much anything in the monastery aside from Gregor. And, unless you've gotten really lucky, you haven't picked up any significant weapon upgrades to match that HP growth, so every fight takes forever and is a huge expenditure of resources.
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Jul 24, 2020 20:47
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So thanks to this thread, I found out that there's a small but surprisingly in-depth selection of mods for Wizardry 8, including options everywhere from "minor tweaks and balance changes" (Christian Coder's mod or Flamestryke's mod) all the way up to "gently caress everything you thought you knew about Wiz8, this is an entirely different game" (Lunastralis or Wizardry Reforged). I'm playing White Wolf's mod now, which is sort of in the middle of those two extremes. It leaves the game's original plot structure more or less alone until the very end, but has a ton of new items, tweaks classes and spells, introduces some new RPCs (including two in the monastery, one of which is a Priest right on the beach so you never have to worry about early game healing), a bunch of new side quests, and then several huge late game/post game areas. There have also been little tweaks to most of the zones; there's an extra shop in Arnika with some new custom items, etc. I'm having a ton of fun with it. It's new enough to be interesting without making me throw out everything I've learned across a dozen playthroughs of the original game.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:02
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You can add zones with Cosmic Forge, but there's a hard cap that they haven't been able to work around yet. I think it's 56 or something, which is way more than the original game actually uses. Lunastralis and Wizardry Reforged (both by the same person) have a ton of entirely-new zones, including space-based and lunar zones. White Wolf re-uses zone geometry for its zones, which honestly is probably a good thing because monsters have an unfortunate tendency to walk through walls in Wizardry Reforged; apparently it's tricky to set the walk meshes to properly match the terrain with Cosmic Forge.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:57
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VictualSquid posted:Does that healing priest tempt you to walk back to him for embarrassingly long distances instead of resting? Like the healing fountain in the tutorial dungeon in wiz7? He's not a healing fountain, he's a recruitable character (like Saxx and Sparkle in the update above). He comes pre-loaded with Heal Wounds and a couple other useful low-level spells and has a few levels on a level 1 party, so he's a nice crutch for a party that's all hybrids or otherwise healer-less. Straight White Shark posted:Huh. Against all expectations I found a copy of the lovely mod I made 15+ years ago floating around, I would have figured it would have disappeared into the ether by now. It's definitely on the former end of that spectrum, it's got a few new spells but mostly it's just a million terrible pun items. I'm a sucker for terrible pun items. I might load that up in Cosmic Forge just to giggle at them.
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Jul 29, 2020 02:14
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Vi and Saxx is a 100% viable and useful endgame RPC loadout. Vi is generally considered either the #1 or #2 RPC (with Saxx being a solid #3), depending on how much you value her spellcasting. Valkyries are a great class; their Cheat Death ability has an extremely high trigger rate, so it's actually really useful, and there are some really nice polearms to take advantage of their class skill bonus. Polearms don't do as much damage as the best swords, but you can get really good ones with nice status effects pretty early and ride them for the whole game. Personally, Sparkle is fine, and absolutely nails the "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed novice" which I kinda like, and there's no real harm in having two Rangers. That said, Vi is just better and you can take her basically anywhere. I think there's only one place in the whole game she objects to entering, and that's because you need both RPC slots free for that area. PurpleXVI posted:Only one I'm currently missing is the short staff, that loving thing always takes me forever to find. I don't think I've seen a short staff in my entire White Wolf's Mod playthrough so far.
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Jul 30, 2020 18:37
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PurpleXVI posted:If only, I actually prefer the third end-game RPC that we haven't met yet because he doesn't complain about several large locations that Vi will demand to be excused from. Oh, whoops. I genuinely thought she didn't mind those places. Ah well.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:02
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Cythereal posted:I've only beaten Wiz8 once, and for some reason I remember really liking the Scandinavian farmgirl voice so that's what I suggested for Aurora here. Agreed. I almost always use that one. It's a hammy, over-acted voice, but so are most of the others and it's hilarious to think of some random Scandinavian milkmaid out there beating up robots, mafiosos, giants, undead, and other assorted badasses.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:41
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There's also a gadget for Shadow Hound, so I always have it running. Also, Chameleon is incredibly good at making enemies not notice your until you're right on top of them. Once you have Chameleon and X-Ray (which shows the position of all enemies on the map), you can usually avoid 100% of combats outside of dungeons.
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Jul 31, 2020 14:49
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Holy poo poo that was an update. Quick notes: Berserk also costs more stamina than regular attacks. It's really noticeable with Lightning Strikes because you'll lose like a third of your stamina per. Demonsting deals double damage to demons, not +10%. Banishing the graveyard ghost does turn off the spawn point in the graveyard. Baron Englund is a reference to Lord British aka Richard Garriott, the guy who made Ultima. The Rattkin Mob (ie the Don) isn't the same faction as the Common Rattkin (ie the Rattkin Breeders), so you can't gently caress yourself out of them stealing the Astral Dominae for you.
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Aug 13, 2020 00:46
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Xander77 posted:Do the patrols get involved in the fights? Can you use enemies to get rid of guard patrols? Yes to both, although it makes the fights take a lot longer and generally speaking the patrols are buff enough to handle any enemies they encounter at this level. If you come back to Trynton at a higher level, there may be nastier critters around who can wipe out the patrols. NPCs won't fight enemies unless you're present, though, and enemies usually focus on the player party if they can. EDIT: Oh, a really cool flavor touch in Trynton. If you pay attention to the area outside the bounds of where you can walk, you will sometimes see GIGANTIC bats flying around (like, King Kong-sized bats). They will never aggro on you because there are invisible walls preventing them from reaching you, and either of you from attacking the other, so they exist purely so you can see one and go "Oh poo poo I hope I never have to fight that!" Zurai fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 20:17
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PurpleXVI posted:Ah, see, funny thing about that. You can ABSOLUTELY fight them. Wait what? I have never, ever seen one of those close enough to even make out more than their silhouette through the fog. And they're certainly not the intended source of vampire bat wings; you can get all the vampire bats you want to fight inside Mt. Gigas.
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Aug 13, 2020 20:32
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Trynton and (lategame area) the Rapax Rift/Castle are the two most likely places for people to bounce once they get past the initial hurdles. They're both long, long sections.
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Aug 18, 2020 19:55
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Croc's "Crawled outta the swamp, didja?" greeting is stuck in my brain. If you have a source of Chameleon (even via a scroll), I'd suggest going the Southeast Wilderness route. That gives you access to one of the Gadgeteer's most useful gadgets, but without Chameleon up you'll get into a fight that I doubt you can win at this point. On the other hand, you'll probably want to come back later to actually beat that fight since it has some good loot.
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Aug 20, 2020 01:09
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If you can beat that fight at this point, I'd love to see it. I usually have to come back closer to level 20, and even then it takes a couple reloads. It's generally considered the hardest fight in the game.
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Aug 20, 2020 01:30
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I bow to the master. Definitely interested to see how you managed it.
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Aug 21, 2020 21:19
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EclecticTastes posted:RFS and Vi Saxx objects to the same areas Vi does, unfortunately.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:06
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Giant's Swords have an enormous KO chance, and KO is tied for Paralysis for second best status after "dead". Also the extended reach shouldn't be underestimated. That said, they're heavy and slow, so they get fewer attacks than Fang will.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:08
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The only part of casting spells that is level-dependent is that they all have a minimum level to learn them. Aside from that it's entirely stat/skill/number-of-spells-you-know-in-that-element dependent.
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Aug 28, 2020 19:48
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That's definitely not my experience. Raising the spell school skills raises both the total amount of spell points you have in that school as well as the amount of spell points you can safely spend on any given spell. I've definitely gotten a level 7 spell, only had 1 yellowish-green circle, then gone off and grinded my Earth (or whatever) casting skill and gotten to 3-4 green circles without ever earning a single point of experience.
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Aug 28, 2020 20:03
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Either you didn't mention it, or you missed a Gadgeteer gadget component in the unexplored area of Mt. Gigas. It's at the bottom of one of those pits with the ropes.
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Aug 31, 2020 18:37
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Yeah, alchemy is a major gold generator. Most of the potions are gold-positive, and the high-end ones (like Potions of Renewal that cure the Drain status) are quite lucrative. It's mostly only needed if you have a Bishop along though and thus have to buy every new spellbook you see.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:05
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The thing that always, always trips me up about the underwater section is that I never remember that Haste is a Fire spell, so I'll use my bard's Rousing Drums and get a failure message identical to when you just flub a cast normally and be incredibly confused for a round of combat or two.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:41
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Did I miss you looting the Bayjin Good Chest? I mean, half the time it still has junk despite the name, but I was half expecting you to luck into all the good poo poo that I've never seen.
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Sep 2, 2020 04:50
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I've never really had a problem with the group instant death spells failing to kill things in larger fights. I usually kill 1-2 enemies per group per cast, which is pretty efficient when you're fighting two groups of Scorchers, a group of flying snakes, and a group of fire ants or something.
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Sep 23, 2020 17:47
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Buffs, healing, and debuffs/crowd control are critical. You're not going to get very far in the game without access to Armorplate, Missile Shield, Magic Screen, Soul Shield, Enchanted Blade, and the like, and Web is an absolute staple of early-to-mid-game combat.
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Sep 23, 2020 19:59
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Yeah, stamina absolutely 100% lowers penetration chances. It's really obvious early on when a samurai gets two Lightning Strikes against Gregor and the second one hits 5 times for 0 damage when the first did reasonable amounts. I don't know if it affects spells or not, but I do know that I use the Rest All instrument frequently in combat. I don't like my party going below 50% if I can help it.
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Sep 24, 2020 16:11
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