What is a good Wizardry 8 party for a beginner?

Take a look at the "Party Building" thread for some examples of what people have used and what they thought of the combinations. The only caveat is that you'll want to take a full group during your first time through (some of the ones described in that thread are smaller).

My suggestion:

Fighter
Mook Ranger
Bard
Gadgeteer
Alchemist
Bishop

With this party you can use almost anything you find and the ranger will automatically search for hidden items.

The two common mistakes;
Any combination of race & class can win the game so some people mistake this to mean that any party can win... not true because it is indeed possible to build a worthless party.

The biggest mistake people make is building a melee only party. This is probably because most of the monsters you will encounter in the early game are melee so they will obligingly run up to you and your melee characters can have at it without needing to move away from the walls/ corners... add in the fact that nobody has the eagle eye skill or any special ammo to speak of and it is easy to see why melee looks attractive for the first 5-10 levels.

Unfortunately, this is so overused. Building an entire character around a certain item you may or may not find at some point in the game isn't very fun roleplaying.

Just an option but ;

Mage - Ninja .

An Alchemist Faerie (intelligence and Dexterity) can outperform a Mages’ damage whilst making potions and have ALL their spells by the time you manage to get the “Corpus Cane”... yes you need Str 50 by the time they swap to a Ninja but you start with 50 bonus points and you don’t need to build range skills!

Fighter - Priest .

Taking a female Dragon Priest (70 Piety and Vitality)... on level two she changes into a Lord or Valkyrie and continues pumping those two stats until level 10 at which point she is a practically unkillable tank/ Healer.

I never liked changing professions during the game, but I admit it may be useful. Anyway, having pure front line fighter is nice, you can just heal your fighter every single combat round, with your combination, you would have to decide to heal or attack. Since you basically save 2 spots for characters like this, what party would you go for?

I don’t take the Alchemist Faerie any more but he could also heal or even resurrect my tank as needed... I’m just pointing out that having one of everything can still be crunched into a party of six (8 with npc).

A bit off topic...
There are four schools of magic;
1. Alchemist = Damage and back up heals.
2. Mage = damage and buffs.
3. Priest = heals and cures.
4. Psionic = disabling.
All four schools can use the portal spell which is very useful but only Priest has the option to skip on Intelligence (Piety instead)... A caster without the Power Cast skill (Felpurr Samurai) can still put up buffs but don’t expect much damage from her spells.

I’ve played this game a lot so I don’t necessarily suggest that a new player should copy me but my current party is;
1. Mook Bard {pickpocket} will swap at level 18 into a Fighter for the extra stamina.
2. Lizardman Psionic as my main caster.
3. Rawulf Bishop as my healer/buffs.
4. Dragon Lord as my front liner.
5. Felpurr Gadgeteer {locks}.
6. Elf Samurai just extra damage and back up caster.

What others have said (avoid Melee parties) holds VERY true, and I might go so far as to say a non-magic party will not be able to finish the game.

In general, I like two melee'ers in the front grid (Fighter/Fighter, FIghter/Samarui, etc).

Despite seeing a lot of reviews not liking the Priest, I use one anyway, plus a mage. You'd probalbly be fine with one of the other pure magic users instead of the mage. Many recommend the Bishop, but he's just too darn slow to develop.
Plus, if the Bishop is the only healer/mage, you're putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. But people say he's very powerful late game, so what the heck do I know?!?

I like the Bard, but he's better early game than late. The Gadgeteer is the opposite. I'm not overly fond of Samurai, but I do like Ninjas for some reason.

I used to think the Ranger is indispensable because it removes the need to ever have to use the Search button (which, when on, subjects you to surprise attacks). So I haven't been using one, though they're insta-kill and critical hits get awesome late game.

I personally almost always go with two fighters in the front grid, a bard/gadgeteer (using both recently for fun). Then a priest and mage in the middle grid. The 6th character (if I don't use both bard and gadgeteer) can be a Valkyrie or Ranger.

Good luck, and whatever you do, get the WizFast program. It makes combat SO much more enjoyable.

Good luck!

It's useful to have at least one character with the alchemy skill in the party so that you can mix potions. This is a great source of income, can produce potions (and similar) that are otherwise hard to find, and also trains the skill. If you take a ranger for the search function then you're guaranteed to have alchemy eventually, although you might have to divert some level-up points to the Alchemy skill initially so that you can access the easiest mixing options early on.

An alchemist (the class) can cover healing needs about as well as the priest, both through his own spells and by providing lots of potions. Between them, alchemy and psionics cover pretty much every healing effect (the alchemist's main weak point is a lack of spell-based mental protection/healing, but that's the psion's strong point), so if you want to try that instead of the more stereotypical mage/priest combination, it's quite doable. Likewise, many other classes have some access to one of those three magic types (Wizardry is the only one that really doesn't have healing options), and even the Bard will pick up a healing instrument eventually.

I think there is no "good party for a beginner" because a beginner should just play like he wants :) I don't like to make a party that other people think is useful, I like to make something that I feel comfortable with. I just recently started this, and picked Samurai, Gadgeteer, Fighter, Lord, Ranger and Bishop, and so far been happy with them no matter if they aren't the best combination in the long run. I think it sucks out just so much away from the experience and feeling of discovery when asking what party is best etc.

Wizardy 8 is actually pretty lenient in this regard. As long as you follow a party setup that makes some amount of sense you can beat the game without much suffering.

Some pointers from me are that Bards get better instruments early game, but Gadgeteers get better gadgets late game, you don't necessarily need a priest if you have a Lord/Valkyrie/Bishop and you don't need to multiclass for success. It also wouldn't hurt to have coverage from all 4 spellbooks, either from pure casters or hybrids.

My party is:

Dracon Fighter
Felpurr Samurai
Mook Ranger
Hobbit Gadgeteer
Elf Psionic
Rawulf Priest

and it's worked out good so far. had a little trouble in the beginning, but once my priest got the Superman spell, and my psionic got the Slow and Haste spells, the game got a lot easier. Plus the samurai gives me access to mage only buffs in addition to his great melee abilities. The Gadgeteer is also good if you're willing to track down the necessary gadget parts (I would recommend you find and print out a list because there's no way you'll find them all without it). But the real star here is my psionic; there is NO WAY I would have stuck with this party without him. This class saved my bacon countless times.

And do yourself a favor and look up each class you decide to take before you spend your stats/skills all willy nilly. Those things are precious!

The good thing about Wizardry 8 is that ANY party can be good, it all depends what you do with them. This also applies to any Race/Job mix

I have 4 Games running in parallel:

Game 1:

Dwarf Fighter
Felpurr Samurai
Felpurr Ninja
Dracon Bishop
Mook Ranger
Mook Gadgeteer

Game 2:

Dwarf Monk
Rawulf Lord
Hobbit Thief
Dracon Bishop
Mook Ranger
Mook Gedgeteer (Yeah, the 3 last are the same as before)

Game 3: limited Party

Felpurr Ninja
Dracon Bishop
Mook Gadgeteer

Game 4: Criticals

Dwarf Monk
Felpurr Samurai
Felpurr Ninja
Dracon Bishop
Mook Ranger
Mook Gadgeteer (you know the 3 last ones, right? ;) )