Finished game: Some thoughts

[Rusty]

Greetings all. At long last my weary party has staggered to the
conclusion of Wizards and Warriors. What a long strange trip
it's been. Here are my thoughts on the game and a few suggestions
for anybody thinking of playing.

I'm an old-timer (43) and the first computer game I ever bought was
_Wizardry_; that title began a love affair with computer role-playing
games, although whenever a vacuum tube burned out the game crashed .
So for me, W&W amounted to the cyber equivilent of comfort food.
It's chicken fried steak with cream gravy. There's nothing cutting edge about this; the
graphics are OK indoors, lame outdoors. The story is cliche. It has
enough bugs to keep Orkin in business for life. But...it's the closest
I've come in a long time to that old feeling. The real guts of the
game is the gradual accumulation of stats, skills and equipment that
transforms your party from worms to demigods. Other than the eye candy,
this isn't significantly different from Wizardry on the Apple IIe.
If this is your cup of tea, than this game, despite it's flaws,
is well worth the effort.

Here are some suggestions in no particular order:

1. Don't agonize over what class to be, exactly which skills to
pursue, or roles to ascend. You'll be plenty strong enough if you
just stick with common sense. I do have one suggestion...the number
of skill points to assign with each level up is dependent on
intelligence, so it's worthwhile to have everybody, even the
bashers, start high. This problem can, however, be overcome with
money to some extent by paying for increased skills in guilds.

2. Party selection: This has been a successful system for me for
almost 20 years -- 2 fighter types in front, 2 clerics in the middle,
two magic users in the rear. I played the game without a thief.
The clerics were pretty much able to heal/cure the result of just
bashing the damn things open. That clickfest to pick them was fun
at first but becomes tedious. I just started bashing them. Advance the
clerics in the healing arts and you'll do OK. If you put a tough guy
in the last slot you might do even better, because all crush damage from
doors, elevators and such is inflicted solely on this last poor slob.

3. I never once used a scroll or any potions other than mana potions.
I never enchanted anything, because I wanted to put my skill points elsewhere.

4. You MUST start out one magic user on the road to the create portal/
teleport/call of home route (moon magic). This will save you so much
time that I can't imagine slogging through this game without them.
As icestorm is also in moon magic, I found it very successful to have
the other magic user learn fire magic. If the Firestorm doesn't affect
them, the icestorm certainly will. At games end, even demons were
no challenge. One icestorm usually killed them without a scratch
to me.

5. SAVE OFTEN. Every ten minutes is not too much. The game WILL crash
and usually after you've neglected to save for two hours.

6. My game at one point crashed every time I left Brimloch Roon. Only
the patch cured this problem. If I were doing it again, I'd install the
patch from the git go. Yes, there are a few 'favorable' bugs, but
a) exploiting them rather defeats the point of the game
b) it cures several maddening problems. In addition to the problem
listed above, it prevents getting stuck with no way out in several
spots, notably elevators that deliver you to a dead end and then stop
cycling.

7. Learn artifact ability early. Money is extremely important in
this game, and you'll have much more of it if you can identify most
things yourself. My identifier was level 7, and only rarely failed
to identify things. Level 7 is probably high enough.

8. Have fighters learn the two-handed attack...it increases the damage
they deal out substantially.

9. Having at least one person with high will is good, like the magic
user with the teleport spells. If not, your party will be in a very
tough spot against mind-contral creatures...and there are a fair
number.

10. Unless you're really hard up for money, I'd get the strategy guide.
Although it's mostly crap, the maps and walkthroughs are worth the
price of admission. You can ferret the same information from this
board, but it will save you a lot of time to have this
at hand.

11. Here's how to escape if your boat gets stuck on a 'sand bar':
Swim out to the middle, cast 'create portal'. Swim back to the boat and
take the helm. Cast 'Teleport'. Or just forget about the boat and
swim. The XP from killing sharks and turtles is good, and be sure to
grab the shells to make SCUBA equipment...you must have this to complete
the game.

12. Once a quest item has been used for completion of a quest, I
never found another use for it. Drop anything you don't want to
carry just outside of town. I dropped tons of stuff on the dock
outside of Brimloch and never lost anything.

Hopefully this will help and make the game more fun for some of you.
Now back to System Shock 2...I found it for $10, just started playing
and so far think it's excellent.

[Sazerac]

Bravo! Bravo!! **APPLAUSE**

An excellent summary of the game and many strategies, Rusty! I appreciated the part about not needing a Rogue, especially with the Barbarian ascension being so easy; it can be done very early on.

I tend to use a 4-character party because I've found that 6 characters get pretty redundant, but on a 4-character party, a good start would be 2 warriors, a priest, and a wizard. I take one warrior to Paladin pretty quickly, take another one to Barbarian (to double as a thief) and develop the Priest and Wizard until they've gotten most of their major spells, then switch them to Warlocks to get the Moon and Fiend spells quickly. From there it's however I decide to develop them.

One other overlooked skill on Thieving though that you may want to emphasize is Pickpocket. You can get high-level items off of some monsters that they would not otherwise drop. For example, during the Crypt, a character with high Dex and moderate pickpocket skills can get some decent amulets and even ankhs (!) off of the rotting mummies (I think there are 4 of them in the Crypt other than F'Lokis Ra). It also gets you the coveted Treasury Key from Freyedies AND the element of evil from Lysandra without having to kill her or become a vamp yourself.

Thanks, Rusty, for an excellent "high-point" write-up. I'm sure starting players will find it very useful.

-Sazerac

To say that the game is, well, bland because of cliche storyline and poor quality programming is fine, but that is not what this game focuses on. These things are just a backdrop (in order to make the game an actual "game") for the real purpose... being character development. This is what makes the game so involving (and terribly addictive!) when playing. Even look in the manual and read "dedicated to those for whom one lifetime is not enough" (or something along those lines). This pretty much sums up the game. It is an entire lifetime for the characters (in comparison to other games of the genre) and that is the point. The game is NOT based on killing Cet, or the triumph over evil, it IS about getting that Zenmaster, and having all the spells, and having more skills than you will ever need! For this reason, not the story or the graphics, is the reason why we all love this game, and why you are reading this reply on this forum!