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Old 04-04-2005, 10:03 AM   #21
Radek
Red Dragon
 

Join Date: April 3, 2001
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Posts: 1,586
1. Warlock's fight abilities. Don't believe scrolls of misinformation! They are telling lot of nonsense, especialy the W&W ones.
Warlocks are excellent fighters but they need the Heroic Might (Spirit Magic, level 4) boost. You can train their fighting skills and the skills will improve. Right, a warlock is a worse fighter than, for example, an assassin at given skill and ability levels but the Heroic Might spell will compensate it.
You can even give a warlock the 2nd Weapon skill (the warlock must be a member of the Fighter's Guild) because there exist a left hand weapon available to warlocks in the game: Main Gauche. Your warlock will have 2 attacks per round.
Train your warlocks in the Dagger skill. The best weapon in the game at all is a dagger (Wizard Blade). Moreover, Main Gauche is a dagger, too. Main Gauche +2 belongs to the best 2nd weapons in the game. Better is Wakizashi +2 (sword), the best is the Assassin Dagger (dagger, but available only to thief classes, not ot warlocks or warriors).

2. The phased combat. It's an attempt to allow the player to use brains instead of quick fingers on his mouse. The base idea is to allow all monsters only one attack. Then the monsters must wait until you decide for some action. Then each monster gets one attack again. And so on.
That means that you have plenty time for decision what to do. Once the monsters have attacked, they have to wait until you decide for the right spell, target the right monster and cast. Only then they can continue attacking.
In practice, the system makes the monsters lame. Only the very fast monsters are dangerous sometimes. The rest of monsters will wait until it gets killed.
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Old 04-05-2005, 12:14 AM   #22
DinkumThinkum
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Join Date: March 30, 2005
Location: Luna Penal Colony
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Quote:
Originally posted by Radek:
1. Warlock's fight abilities. Don't believe scrolls of misinformation! They are telling lot of nonsense, especialy the W&W ones.
I'm used to inaccurate manuals, believe me. [img]smile.gif[/img]

This bit of misinformation seemed to be reasonable, though: other classes are penalized learning non-native spells, but Warlocks aren't. So it seemed reasonable that Warlocks would instead have a penalty for learning combat skills.

Glad this has been cleared up, and thanks for the extra info about daggers.

Quote:
Originally posted by Radek:
2. The phased combat. It's an attempt to allow the player to use brains instead of quick fingers on his mouse. The base idea is to allow all monsters only one attack. Then the monsters must wait until you decide for some action. Then each monster gets one attack again. And so on.
That means that you have plenty time for decision what to do. Once the monsters have attacked, they have to wait until you decide for the right spell, target the right monster and cast. Only then they can continue attacking.
In practice, the system makes the monsters lame. Only the very fast monsters are dangerous sometimes. The rest of monsters will wait until it gets killed.
This is really just personal preference; we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.

Here's what bugs me about the combat system:

1. While the monsters are at a distance, everything is strictly real time (as far as I can tell). If I clickity-click with the mouse fast enough, I might manage to get off a few spells while they're charging, but mostly I don't get anywhere.

So that's one part of combat (at a distance) where my reflexes, mousing skill, etc. are more important than my characters' speed, skills, etc. and where I don't have time to think about what I'm doing. Stop to look at spells or think of what to do, and the creatures are on top of me.

2. Once the creatures do get close and start swinging, that's also semi-realtime. I don't have to wait for the monsters to finish their attacks: I can start swinging or casting anytime I want. If I'm lucky and fast enough, I may even manage to kill one or two monsters before they get their swings in.

And this is also dependent on my personal skills, mousing clicking speed, etc., not on my thinking and planning and not on my characters' abilities.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If my characters get clobbered because I make bad decisions, I'll happily learn from my mistakes and try to figure out better tactics for the next battle. But when my characters die because I just wasn't fast or accurate enough with the mouse, that ticks me off. I just don't enjoy that type of gaming.

As you mentioned, so far most of the monsters seem to be pretty wimpy, and I seem to be winning most battles despite hating the combat system. I'll probably keep playing the game, since there are enough things I like in it to make up for the annoying combat.
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Old 04-05-2005, 11:23 PM   #23
Bungleau
40th Level Warrior
 

Join Date: October 29, 2001
Location: Western Wilds of Michigan
Posts: 11,752
There is only one set of monsters (two variations) that *really* make combat skills important. You'll meet them on the other sideo of Ishad N'ha, and when you hear the voices of thousands of other IronWorkers telling you to RUNNNN!!!!.... just do it [img]smile.gif[/img]

Remember the IW motto... they WILL hunt you down...

No other monster is as challenging as those two cousins... and if you want to be spoiled about them, just ask. If not... then take my advice, and be sure to save your game after you leave Ishad N'ha-ha-ha. You WILL be needing it... guaranteed.
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Old 04-06-2005, 05:12 AM   #24
DinkumThinkum
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One of the things I like in CRPGs is character development: lots of character class choices, interesting skills and spells to learn, etc.

And W&W does have plenty of that: one of the reasons I asked so many questions [img]smile.gif[/img] about skills, etc. in this thread is that I enjoy figuring out what skills I want for my characters, how to develop them, etc.

But I wish the game offered more chances to effectively use use the skills and spells in combat. Right now, I'm part way through the first crypt (in the Asylum area), and most of my battles consist of putting the mouse pointer in the middle of a mob of enemies and clicking the mouse button as fast as I can until the enemies are all dead.

So far, I've been playing on the average difficulty setting; when I go back to the game, I'll try turning it up to the higher setting to see if that makes combat more interesting.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frankly, I'm surprised at the combat system in the game. I've played Wizardry 6 & 7, both done by DWB, so I know he's worked with detailed combat systems before (my experience with those games was a big part of my decision to try Wizards and Warriors). W&W has detailed character development, classes, etc. similar to what was in the Wizardry games, but the combat is nowhere on a par with the Wizardry games or most other party-based CRPGs I've played.

NOTE: I am enjoying the game! Some parts of it, especially the combat system, aren't near as good as what I was hoping for, but overall it is fun to play.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This game's been out for several years. I'm new to it, and I have no idea what the long-term posters and players have figured out already.

Anyway:

My impression, both from the combat system and the sometimes bizarre interactions with NPCs in town, is that at least some of the game's code was originally written for a single-character game, and then the party-based code was just slapped on later.

For example, that (to me) might explain why NPCs in town want to do their entire long-winded greeting from scratch every time I select a new party member while in their building.

Just the way the game feels to me; this was probably debated and settled years ago! [img]smile.gif[/img]
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Old 04-06-2005, 05:48 AM   #25
Radek
Red Dragon
 

Join Date: April 3, 2001
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Posts: 1,586
AFAIK, the game was put into market in the middle of the development. No money, no time, we are going so sell the game now! Here is the result:

(a) The game is full of bugs. Some of them work for you, some of them are nasty traps.
(b) The development of the game has been left unfinished. For example, note all those non-interacting objects in the game, which pretend to be interactive (blue cursor). The game combines multiplayer and singleplayer ideas even if it is only sigleplayer. The game is unbalanced and it needs a beter tuning awfully.

Nevertheless, the game is great even in its sorry state. It's a pity that the project hasn't been finished. I daresay we would have one of the best CRPGs ever seen.

[ 04-06-2005, 05:49 AM: Message edited by: Radek ]
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Old 04-11-2005, 05:45 PM   #26
DinkumThinkum
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Quote:
Originally posted by Radek:
1. The skills. Nobody has made the list so far. Here is my personal experience:
(a) As Bsftcs has said, the weapon skills improve by practicizing them. But, usually, they improve only if you really use them. The Sword skill will improve only if you fight with a sword, and so on.
(b) Magic users improve all their "natural" magic shools (the ...craft skills) but they do not improve the rest of magic schools.
(c) Mages, Warlocks, and Zenmasters improve the Sorcery skill by casting spells.
(d) Thief-like characters (thiefs, barbarians, ninjas, assassins, and bards) improve the Lockpicking skill by picking locks and the Pickpocket skill by stealing.
(e) The rest of skills does not(?) improve by practicizing and you must train them by investing skill points or by training in guilds.
Some minor additions:

a. Shield skill doesn't seem to go up with use; but even with just one point it does stop an occasional hit, so I figure it's doing some good.

c. Rangers and priests also improve their Sorcery skill with use, so I would guess all the roles with native spell-casting ability will improve it.

e. Athletics skill appears to be going up on its own, very slowly, for at least the lead character in my party. That might be because of all the swimmming in the starting crypt.

Now that I've spent a little time in the game, I realize that skill advancement with use is pretty minor in W&W. I asked because in other games where skills improved with use, building skills through practice was a significant part of game play (Wasteland, Daggerfall/Morrowind, the last couple of Wizadry games, for example).


Quote:
Originally posted by Radek:
2. The inborn traits. IMO, the Quick Learner and the Mana Seed are the only valuable inborn traits. The rest of inborn traits represents either no advantage or only a temporary advantage. Beware of pixies! The Dodge trait looks very interestingly but it causes pixies to dodge their own spells! It's a very annoying bug, which can make you ready for a madhouse at higher character levels. Pixies are almost unable to cast defensive spells on themselves.
Summary: Select elves and omphaazes. Avoid pixies. If you decide for other races then it does not matter which races you select. If you will see some difference between races at all (except elves and omphaazes) then you will see it only in the beginning of the game.
The Quick Learner trait does make a real difference for the Elves in gaining experience.

So far, I really can't see a major effect from the Mana Seed trait, but I haven't really watched mana regeneration that closely. Biggest advantage I'm seeing to my Oomphaz priest is her high carrying capacity (due to her size); makes her great for carrying loot. Gave her the Artifacts skill, which cuts back on swapping loot around to get it identified.
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