As the title says, I just ascended for the first time and I have to admit I really enjoyed this game.

I am a Wizardy veteran, at least of the first two games which I played on a friends fathers Apple ][ e back in the early 80's. I got a copy of Wiz 6 from a second-hand shop a few years back but I just couldn't get into it, and I only bought Wiz8 because the local games shop had a "3 for £20" deal and it was the only thing I could find to make up the three.

I spent no time building characters, because I didn't think I was going to enjoy the game, so I took 6 standard characters from the prebuilt ones and stormed in. I was right, I hated it. After many years playing FPS games with sophisticated user interfaces Wiz8 seemed old fashioned and clunky. But I stuck with it, and slowly got used to it and after a short time I was hooked and couldn't put it down. The rest is history.

So what comments do I have:

Well I only found this site about half way though playing so I knew nothing of training skills etc. I think more should have been made of this in the game so you knew what to try and do.

Some of the early fights were so tough I found myself reloading and reloading. Later "tougher" fights were suprisingly easy. I have read accounts of the Souleater being the most dreaded fight, well all I can say to that is "Medusa Stones". Actually I must admit that by the time I had been to the Rapax armourer in the castle and stocked up on Mystic arrows and Medusa stones 99% of my fights were very very simple. Almost everything got paralysed (fighter/ranger with Mystic and bard with Medusa) and then we just pounded it to dust. At the end I think my deadliest opponents were the Admantium (sp?) Mares. They were deadly and their turncoat ability seemed to slip through the protection spells. I found myself mourning the loss of several party members when my 18th level monk started dishing out punch x 3, kick x 3, 3 times per round. Strange how she never got that many criticals on the enemy!!!

Excellent game, I'd like to think I'll play it again, but I doubt it. I fully appreciate the subtleties of playing with the many combinations of races/classes and numbers of characters but I think I'd get bored and give up to quick.

But never say never.

Welcome bladedog!
Well, what can anybody say about this game. It's, what, 2-3 years and the site is still fairly popular and people are still finding the game, somewhere.
I just started back into it a few weeks ago. It's just darn good and I usually don't like fantasy rpg's with sci-fi mixed in. Get Sirtech a gov't grant I say! With all the money being pi**ed away, this would be a worth while cause!