Hey, if you made it down the terrible road to Arnika with your very first party, and without even reading the manual, consider yourself skilled. Plenty ended up dumping their first groups and restarting, based on painful experience. I mention no names
Anyway, you came to the right place for Wizardry (but you already know that). One thing: if you have the original release of the game, you will need to patch it. That's mainly because of a huge gaffe where the game crashes if you try to reach Ascension Peak by any means. How that slipped by them I don't know.
The downside is that the latest fix (whatever that is) also nerfs pickpocketing terribly. Then again, PP isn't vital, so you can do without it and not suffer.
Nightowl2