Wiz8 is more of a predictive game, in phased-based mode. Continuous is the more reactive mode, have casters set to defend, and cast spells when needed, heh. And, as such, it's often not hard to not take enough damage for heal-all to be that useful in combat. There are exceptions, of course. And, bishops develop divinity plenty fast if they're the long-term buff caster.

Cones are great, most of the time. Unless you don't understand how the game works. The major exception is foes that nuke the party at long ranges. But, once you know whereabouts they hang out. It's just a matter of reflexive skills, which isn't hard for someone who's played a lot of Doom II pistol starts. (Since slaughter maps are chiefly about herding demons effectively. Wow, am I bad at that. Proceeds to eat ten revenant rockets simultaneously.)

Are level seven priest spells necessary? No. Although, falling stars is effectively the second best damage spell in the game, and death wish absolutely has its uses—although asphyxiation should be better. And Restoration is good, but more for its stamina regen and cleansing. And, it's even better on a bard, of course.

Are you saying Crystal Project combat is similar to Potato Flowers in Full Bloom? Because that game's combat is very engaging. The indie RPG that seems interesting to me, at this moment, is Caves of Lore.

Wiz8 is a simplistic system with predictable AI. Like Proving Grounds, it's a game a skilled player can iron man blind. Now, Augury of Chaos, is mostly about winning initiative at the end—high-level 3e dandy being what it is—so that your wizard can nuke the enemy wizards first.

But RChu1982 has a complete spellbook for each of his specialists, so he has x-ray. Regardless, I've gotten very good at getting x-ray at level eight on my bishops. Which is usually in Arnika, or at most by northern wilderness. Which is where getting surrounded starts to become more of a likelihood. Nevertheless, anyone who checks the manual, and has any RPG experience, can tell that not having a mage and priest is going to make the game harder for a bit, so that's on the player for trying a harder party first. (The benefits of an Alchemists is harder to glean, and the manual does make bishop sound like a trickier character to build. They're pretty easy once one learns how the spell system works, though.) It's such a game-changer.

At this point. I'm convinced that my version of the game is broken. It's far too easy.

Of course, if the bard with the Renaissance Lute is unconscious and also low on health, or even if just silenced, you're going to need someone else to provide the Restoration spell.

At high levels, fighter-types tend to get so much HP that Heal Wounds PL7 (or Heal All, for that matter) isn't enough to bring the character back up to full. Hence, you may either need to have multiple characters heal the fighter, or use Restoration (PL3 or higher).

The Restoration potion, incidentally, is one of the better consumables. It's both cheaper and better than the Cure Disease potion, with the Cure Disease potion's only advantage is that it can be mixed with (IIRC) a Heavy Heal potion to get a Renewal Potion.

Restoration is the level 7 spell I like to get first for a Bishop. If I'm playing without saving spell picks, it's ideally the spell the Bishop learns at level 11.
Haven't actually heard of that potato flower game.

There are definitely similarities to Final Fantasy 5 (with the whole class system with subcommands, as well as the way some boss fights can play out), and the ability to preview actions reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics (I don't think you can preview actions in FFT, but you can preview the turn order, which is very useful with spells that need to charge, a mechanic that Crystal Project also has).

There's still a lot of randomness in Wizardry 8, certainly more than in, say, Crystal Project.

Case in point: The Sorceress Queen fight, particularly if you're at a low level. You might very well be hit with Death Cloud, and once that happens, there's a real risk of characters dying outright, even with Element Shield and Purify Air (and having both spells available is *highly* recommended; just imagine the fight underleveled without either spell). Then, once that happens, you are out some characters, and need to do without their actions; Resurrection can reverse it, but only on one character at a time and somebody needs to spend a turn doing so.

Incidentally, I think Wizardry 8 and D&D 3e may have opposite behaviors at higher levels; in Wizardry 8, high level combat just has a lot more HP to go around, and initiative is only really important when it comes to effects other than damage. At high levels, a character who starts the round at full HP is likely to survive it unless hit with an instant kill attack.
Cones do not have the flexibility or range that radius spells have. In particular, if you want to kill long range attackers without running toward them, and you want to use spells, you need to use radius spells or other non-cone spells (like Crush and Psionic Blast); this is especially true if you can't get to the enemies, or if doing so would add more enemies into the encounter. Also, cones do not work well when you're surrounded, whereas radius spells and sometimes Psionic Blast do.

The developers definitely knew this. If you look at cone and radius spells at level 3 and 4, and ignore the air spells, the cone spells are a bit stronger than the radius spells. (As for Air spells, Noxious Fumes is weak for its level to balance out the status ailments the spell can cause, and Whirlwind is weak because it's a Priest general-purpose area damage spell.)

By the way, Holy Water is an unusual case:
* Radius Targeted
* Only Thrown range, not Long
* Quite strong for its level, as strong as Iceball
* But it's a special purpose spell, that can only target certain creature types.
* Corollary: Holy Water can backfire, but such a backfire is harmless except in rare situations (that involve a friendly undead or demon; unlikely to happen unless the player loves Turncoat).

For the party I'm planning, I'm wondering which Bishop should go for X-Ray: My Dwarf or my Elf.

Current plans look something like this:
* Elf is a 4 school bishop, perhaps starting with Wizardry/Psionics, adding Alchemy when Wizardry starts to taper off, and ideally getting Divinity up in time for Heal All.
* Dwarf is likely Wizardry/Divinity, but will also be using Mace or Staff; I'm thinking Staff at the moment, but I could change my mind. (Staff has the Staff of Doom, while Mace has Diamond Eyes and The Mauler, though dual-wielding them isn't a good idea without a class change.)

Why does a fighter need to be healed to full during combat? Is percentage based damage a thing in this game? (FFII flashbacks. Just kidding, I don't grind hp in that game.)

Potato Flowers in Full Bloom is an indie jblobber. It's phased-based combat where the enemies attack and target is displayed during the command phase. What makes it interesting is attacking and dodging use stamina, which can only be recovered by resting during a turn, which means taking full damage if the target of an attack. Well, unless a different character can use a skill to protect that character, of course. The combat often feels more like a puzzle, which is actually pretty fun.

That optional fight does have a warning. It's easy to walk around it, just like the warning before the pagoda crabs. Oops. Plus, with x-ray, why not use combat movement to check on the enemies without locking combat?

Yeah, Wiz8 is even more hp bloated than 3e. Well, and less save or die/suck. But 3e does have immunities to handle the latter. Augury of Chaos has the further issue that Pierre, in his infinite wisdom, added a ridiculous homebrew level nine wizard spell. (Rolls d8 and has a random effect on top of no-save blind.) (On hp bloat, in Neverwinter Nights a warrior type starts in the teens, and can end up in five-hundred to even a thousand hp by level forty.)

Cone are great because of their damage, and how easy it is to get most of group in the range. My bishop, at level twelve, and with just shy of fifty power cast, was still getting immense value out of magic missiles. The problem is sprites and unicorns. I hate unicorns. Other spell-casters can usually be dealt with higher level single-target spells. Running towards non-spell caster is actually a good idea, for cones and also higher ranged accuracy.

X-ray will help build both mental and wizardry, so it makes sense to try and take it on the bishop that more needs those skills high. Also, staves are a good choice, because extend, as well as damage. But mace is also very good if extended range is not needed, or if a shield is.

Here's another stupid idea: all dracons. Mage, bishop, monk, ninja, samurai, lord. Building throwing on most, and extended weapons, so polearms for the three that can use them, and staff for the rest. Maybe have the spell casters stick to stones until possibly late game. (I can confirm that the pagoda crabs don't stand a chance, not that that particularly matters.)

So that you don't need to heal the fighter again later in the combat. Also, it is quite possible for a character to take more than 70 damage in a round.

(By the way, I really wish this spell was in Wizardry 6 and 7. As it is, it is a pain to heal a high level character back to full, even if you're not in combat and are in a safe place where you can easily rest. Especially puzzling is that the spell *does* exist, under the name MADI, in Wizardry 1-5, where it is the most practical method of healing at high levels (second strongest healing spell heals at most 24 and averages 13.5, while MADI is a full heal).)

Another way of putting it, is that those high HP are essentially wasted if you can't heal them that quickly.


I don't like immunities, as they can make various abilities useless, and essentially take away mechanics from the game.

Like, why bother with instant death attacks when everything you'd want to use them on is immune? (Wizardry 8 is better than many games here; while it's unlikely to work on bosses or higher level enemies, and undead are immune, the game has you face plenty of low-level high-HP enemies, which often fall to PL1 death spells, not to mention elementals.)

There's also the issue of enemy immunities invalidating player builds, which can be a problem in games were builds are mostly set in stone. (Worth noting that, in Wizardry 8, builds are partially set in stone (you can boost skills and learn some spells without leveling up, but can't raise stats that way), and in Crystal Project, they're not set in stone at all.)

This also happens in Crystal Project.

biogoo did an all-dracon playthrough on youtube, with the restriction that all damage had to be done through dracon breath. Some battles were easy, while others were time-consuming (a certain water element fight apparently took something like 130 rounds), and I believe he had to get the evil ending because the Dark Savant was too much, but it did work.

I'm thinking of using some dracons in my party, but not just dracons.

party is looking like:
* elf bishop (int/spd, with sen third)
* dwarf bishop (str/int, with dex third, note that this character is an apprentice)
* dracon valkyrie (str/dex)
* mook ranger (str/int, then dex, planning on eventual giant sword)
* dracon bard (breath for when Piercing Pipes aren't the best choice)
* dracon fighter (str/dex), replaced with dracon gadgeteer when rescuing Vi (breath useful before getting that port-o-potty and when it isn't useful, likely won't be used after getting the Tsunami gadget)

Resting is such garbage in Bradley's latter Wizardries. Of course, healing is also often seen as a pain in early Wizardry due to cast in dungeon restriction. Either way, the high hp is useful during early battle. And the only reason you'd need that much healing is in parties where taking most other level seven spells on a bishop makes a lot less sense.

Dandy is even better with instant death than Wiz8 is, by the way. (Not to mention things like the high level cleric insta-death spell goes through death immunity, and gets a bonus to DC(!).) And monster immunities are not an issue to arcane caster, who have answers to everything. In Neverwinter Nights, the homebre spell Issac's greater missile storm is busted on a single target, that the common strat of " throwing ike-ikes" works on many boss battles. It's no-save, no to-hit roll. Only high SR or specific immunities hamper it. And, of course, there's always the cheesy golem polymorph backed with damage shields...

But I was talking more about player immunities. The sad part is that NWN's official modules, and many user-generated mods, give out always on immunity equipment. Like a helment of mind-immunity near illithids. Which defeats the purpose of fighting illithids!

I've heard that bosses being immune to everything is a jRPG staple. I also know, that in the circles I hang-out, that jRPG often defaults to just Final Fantasy. (Americans. Americans never change.) But I also know that MegaTen subverts that.

I once saw someone hating on PFiFB due to the puzzling nature. I'm hesitant on Crystal Project because I couldn't ever get into FFIII, V, or Dimensions.

biogoo later went back and got a different ending. After a bucket-load of grinding.

You already know everything I'm going to write next, but it might be helpful for those who wind up here after a web search.

A gadgeteer is fine on Arnika Road, but a fighter is better. So that replacement just works. A gadgeteer can get up to snuff fast enough to not mind the xp loss.

Giant's sword with a bard and gadgeteer is great, since the opportunity cost of a stamina battery is much less the more stamina vampires in use. Rangers are also just pretty great characters, and that one can use the demonsbane with a shield before the giant's sword.

There are two downsides with dracons. The obvious one is a small factor, and that is the resistance penalties. The less obvious one is low sens and int. Of course, this is only an issue for a few classes. Now, the valk does have the polearm bonus to help alleviate this, and later gets the, arguably, best spell school in the game. It's a bigger issue on a rogue that wants to grind stealth or a dual-wielding fighter, lord, or samurai. Of course, breath is very nice on fighters, rogues, divinity casters, and psionics casters. The last group lacks in bonus points, with the dracon monk, in particular, starting as an apprentice.

Only one speed caster has a weakness when both soul shield and elemental shield are required. That's a very minor issues, since getting divine up to one hundred is easy, so it's only mental protection that could be an issue. (Unicorns could be an issue, but they aren't particularly fast.) A felpurr is an interesting alternative to an elf, but only if slightly faster snake speed is desired at the cost of slower power cast.

Well, that party will have more than enough physical damage. And pretty great magical damage, too. Not to mention that power cast ranger is probably the best taxed power caster.

Resting is also garbage in earlier Wizardries. You can rest for free to regain all your spells, but regaining HP by resting is such garbage in those games. Thing is, to recover HP through resting:
* You have to spend money
* Your character ages, which means more stat losses at level up


Seeing as you can regain spells for free and with no or minimal aging (depending on version), paying money to rest does not make sense. I've seen it done in speedruns, but there is never a reason for a casual player to do so.

The problem with healing magic, isn't so much the "cast in dungeon" restriction, but more a couple other factors, both of which are not true in Wizardry 8:
* Healing spells are ludicrously weak until 6th level spells (and therefore MADI) show up, and even then learning MADI isn't guaranteed (though class changing after reaching level 11 as a Priest can give you more chances)
* There's no multi-target healing (if you don't count MAHAMAN which is not practical for routine healing because of the cost of a level, not to mention the unreliability)

Wizardry 6 and 7 are actually worse in terms of healing magic after a while. While Heal Wounds can at least be twice the power of DIALMA (and slightly more in 7) if you cast it at max power, it's still too weak for higher levels, and there's no upgrade. Wizardry 7 has a multi-target heal (Healthfull), but that actually heals even *less* per character, unlike 8's Heal All.

Reminds me of how, in the SaGa 3 remake, two things happen around the same time:
* The game makes it easy to get Ribbons (immune to all status ailments, including instant death)
* Enemy monsters start using Grave Tackle, which is a physical attack that can cause instant death to a group. This ability is quite common, found even on monsters you wouldn't expect to have it, like higher-tier fairies. (Fortunately, each party member is considered a separate group in this game, so it's not multi-target instant death.)
* (Also worth noting that the game basically hands you one of the most powerful spells in the game, Flare, and it doesn't require practice with other spells to learn, unlike non-basic spells (yes, this Flare is technically a basic spell).)

(Worth noting that, if you have a high tier monster in your party, that monster might be able to use Grave Tackle, which is actually really good in random battles because of how often status effects work. You may need to feed the character Elixirs to keep doing this, but at this point in the game they're cheap. (Flare is more expensive per use, and even that costs less per use than what enemies drop.) Or, you can use Cottages between battles, which are much cheaper than Elixirs and affect the entire party. Note that non-monsters only get HP from this, as they don't have skills that recover this way.)

It's interesting to look at how the early Final Fantasy games handled this:
* FF1: Some bosses have some immunities, but it wasn't universal. A couple of the major bosses even have status *weaknesses*. Plus, the only boss outright immune to the 8th level Stop and ZapI (Banish) spells is the final boss. On the other hand, status ailments work so rarely that it's hard to land one on a boss, even with a weakness. There's also a couple status spells that ignore weakness.
* FF2: Status spells are more effective than in FF1, provided the caster isn't wearing heavy armor. Only 2 bosses are immune to the Change/Transform element that contains most of the instant death spells; one of them being the final boss.
* FF3 (FC): Here they decided to give bosses outright immunity to status ailments. Or, in other words, if a battle is a boss fight, status ailments don't work on enemies. This immunity is applied even to spells it probably shouldn't be, like Drain. On the other hand, status ailments almost always work in random encounters
* FF4 (SNES): The boss immunity remains (though I believe Drain is no longer included). There's at least one boss fight that doesn't have the boss flag set, however. Also, status ailments don't work quite as well, but are still useful when they do work (especially with that one spell that causes petrification).
* FF5: Boss status immunity is gone. It is common for bosses to have long lists of immunities, but there's usually one or two gaps in the immunity list. Even in the final battle, there are a couple targets with glaring gaps in their immunity list which it is possible to exploit.
* FF6: Fewer boss stats vulnerabilities than FF5 here. (Note that I actually consider this to be the first modern Final Fantasy game; I believe the director changed at this point. Also, I don't think it's as good as FF5.)

Also, earlier Dragon Quest also subverts the boss immunity rule. In fact, in Dragon Quest 3, there's a certain major boss that is not immune to status ailments, to the point where speedrun strategies tend to exploit that fact.

I watched a different run of his, one with 6 Bishops, where he didn't even get any ending. Instead, he killed Bela during the fight against the Dark Savant and was able to loot the Cobaltine Powerglove. (Unfortunately, you can't get the Ring of Power this way, and after doing this you can't beat the game afterwords.)

I checked a video, and rescuing Vi gives your party 7,000 XP, which is enough to bring a brand new character, regardless of class, up to 4th level, avoiding the time at 1st level where HP is dangerously low. (Note that, if you do have to fight with such a low HP character, Guardian Angel can help since it isn't limited to the target's max HP.)

For comparison:
* Elf: PC 11, SS 16.
* Human: PC 12, SS 17. (Or any other expert skill instead of SS, including Power Strike or Iron Skin.)
* Felpurr: PC 13, SS 13.

Fairy and Gnome are also possibilities, though with their drawbacks. (Gnome, in particular, is mainly useful if you want a *slow* caster, which can be useful in phased combat, as you can have your Heal All or Purify Air spell go off later in the round. Those Djinni might not be able to do much to you if you're reliably able to Purify Air at the end of the round, at least until you run out of SP (Mana Stones help here).)

Also, you don't necessarily need Element/Soul Shield to both be fast. Death Cloud is a scary spell, but a slow Element Shield will provide good protection, as resistance isn't checked until the end of the round.
Worth noting that Dracon Psionics and Monks (and Bishops) don't have low senses and intelligence because of the class minimums.

That's the thing with apprentices; they tend not to have any severe stat weaknesses. Case in point: A Dwarf Bishop can get Power Cast one level sooner than a Dwarf Priest. (One way to exploit this is to start as a Bishop, raise int with half your bonus points and boost pie to qualify for Priest, then change to Priest, and you can get Power Cast at a lower XP total than otherwise possible for a Dwarf Priest.)


One other observation: Some Bishops start with 7 Wizardry before bonus points, allowing the learning of 2nd level Mage spells without having to practice (and therefore without needing to learn any 1st level Mage spells to practice).

Further testing:
* An Elf Bishop who starts with 59 Intelligence has 7 Wizardry. (This is before bonus points, so you can start with 12, get 15 at level 2, and learn level 2 spells when leveling up to level 3.)
* An Elf Bishop with 58 Intelligence only has 6 Wizardry. (Hence, we know that 59 is a breakpoint.)
* A Dwarf Bishop starts with 5 in each spellbook skill (and Artifiacts). A Dracon Bishop, 4. A Lizardman Bishop, only 1.
* Note that there's probably no reason to use a Lizardman Bishop. While you get to start with high Strength and Vitality, you could probably do better with a Human for that setup (particularly since the Human's high stat sum helps builds that need decent scores in every stat). Dwarf and Dracon at least have special uses that make them potentially reasonable choices, but Lizardman does not and is only good for challenge runs, as far as I can tell.

Speaking of which, here's how a Str/Vit Bishop (favoring Str) looks like:
* Lizardman: At level 1, has 60/70. At level 7, *still* has 50/70. At level 8, might have 62/70. (Iron skin level 18, Power Strike 21.)
* Dracon: At level 1, 55/60. At level 4, 58/60. At level 8, 70/72. Gets both expert skills at 18.
* Dwarf: At level 1, 55/60. At level 3, 57/60. At level 8, 72/75. Gets Iron Skin at 17, Power Strike at 18.
* Human: At level 1, 45/45. At level 8, 72/72/ Gets both expert skills at 18.

As you can see, even for the one (rather unusual) Bishop build that Lizardman are best suited for, there's better racial choices.

(Then again, who plays Str/Vit Bishops anyway?)

Thing is, the effect of Piety on SP is actually rather small, especially once you already know a bunch of spells.

It's so small that I can argue that it really should have been bigger.

Also, casters don't really need that much stamina. Unless your party is significantly encumbered, the stamina cost of spells is rather low. (If your party *is* significantly encumbered, then you will start to notice the stamina cost of spells.)


Fang is practical simply because it's reliably obtainable, whereas the Light Sword is a rare drop from a non-respawning source. As a result, I can consider Fang, but not Light Sword.

On the other hand, there's also the Giant Sword. Not usable by Bard/Gadgeteer, but if you do have someone who can use it, you're going to have at least 2 of them by the time you get Fang.

Considering only reliably obtainable weapons, and not counting the Giant Sword, it turns out that swords aren't actually a good weapon type; there's better options in polearms, maces (including by far the strongest offhand weapon), and even staves.

(By the way, how does Bloodlust on a Ranger sound?)