I believe in a natural right to be a maroon, but I don't understand why some would choose such, for those who have a choice, of course, of course. But, being hyper-conservative with language? Well, I did minor in French whilst being a typical La Raza mutt. #multiEthnicMasterRace

Meanwhile, I'm using level one spells, to useful effect, on expert, mind you, even in the tweens. But that's a typical result of my spell-casting warriors, because I don't power-level skills.

Curious, when a piece of software doesn't cater to my whims, I hardly feel frustrated. Then again, my eclectic tastes are often so esoteric that, as an eccentric, I surely would have had an aneurysm. Now, my own ignorance, that leads to frustration! I've had many more of those wonderful moments of riding the edge in games with weak healing, than those with strong. Then again, consumables being the most consistent, reliable, and available sources of healing often make a game far more enjoyable than spell-casters. Better yet with a meaningful restriction of healing. Of course, that can be ruined just as easily: Knights of the Chalice says hi.

The actual topic at hand seems to indicate that a certain Steam user's "death wish" party will be successful. I thought as much. He is the one that has such a disdain for specialist casters that his synthetic MDP included a bombing ninja and a mindblast monk. Did extremely well through the game until the peak. Ascended, but ran into some nasty hiccups at that point.

Multiple SoDs would be a hoot. The vampire chain should be the better whip. A little damage for bonuses is usually worth it.

The one thing about LoLS is how often one can expend a mere charge to both go back to town, and warp to almost any square in the dungeon. MDPs aren't that odd of a thing, generally speaking. At least one person beat Augury of Chaos with six red wizards, for example. Not to mention the magic only challenge in Final Fantasy. I know at least one person beat that on PlayStation. And, this led me to look it up, and seems another made it to the final dungeon on NES.

[Since I tire of caster parties, I'm going back to the casting warrior flush. Now that I know more than the last time I tried it, it should go smother. And it will elongate the "painful" portion of the game. All Dracons, all str/dex/spd/sen, why not? Also, for the lulz, sticks and stones, and expert. Let's see if I cry by Trynton. ;)]

Worth noting that, at mid levels, a character with lower realm skill might be better off using higher level spells. For example, a level 10 bishop might theoretically be able to reliably use Fireball at PL6 but Fire Bomb only at PL3, but if the character's skill is low, the character might only be reliably able to reach PL2 on either spell. The skill requirements for reliably casting spells of different levels don't vary as much as the level requirements, the latter of which may not be too important when your skill is low.

I do some power-leveling, usually when I need the skill to be higher to learn new spells, or because the skill is not as high as I'd like it to be, but I generally don't spend that much time with it. I will sometimes do things like start fake combat and cast Stamina, or save/load to get more practice for certain spells (I like to do this a lot if the first cast fizzles, for example).

By the way, I now have Psionic Blast, one of my favorite spells, on one Bishop. (Remember: Psionic Blast can be cast through walls.)

One problem with consumables is that, usually, everyone can use them, meaning that it no longer becomes a differentiating factor between characters, and it also means you typically can't build a character as your main healer, or as a backup healer. (I actually like having to worry about making a backup healer just in case something happens to the main healer.) (Also, I may be more inclined to use consumables in games where it's a character ability rather than something anyone can do, but they still need to be powerful enough. Final Fantasy 5 is one game where I'd be inclined to use consumables with some characters, particularly with the Throw and Mix commands, the latter being one of my favorite abilities I've encountered.)

There's also the strategy of when to heal, who to heal, and (particularly in high-attrition games) whether it's worth spending the turn and resources to heal now, or whether it's better to wait for the battle to end and then use more efficient healing abilities afterwords. (Of course, there are a few games that turn this on its head, like with making healing more effective during combat (Final Fantasy 9, also NES FF1 due to a bug with the HEL2 spell), and some games that provide free or cheap combat/only healing (many Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games, Crystal Project). (By the way, Crystal Project is a good example of a game where you can build a character to be a healer; one of my favorite healing set-ups involves a specific main/sub class combo and also uses equipment to boost the power of otherwise weak healing spells.)

It's also interesting when healing abilities have unusual mechanics. Take, for example, the White Wind spell in many Final Fantasy games. It heals the entire party, and it can be quite powerful, but the catch is that the healing is equal to the caster's current HP. This has some interesting strategic implications. For example:
* It can be useful to give that specific character more HP.
* Self-healing abilities become more useful when they're on a character with an ability like this.
* One useful strategy is to have one character with this ability, but have another character with a good single-target heal. Then you effectively have two characters working together to heal the party. (Chrono Trigger has this with some double techniques, but suffers from the fact that it's an explicit mechanic rather than an emergent strategy, and the party size of 3 is too small for 2 characters to be needed to do something like this. There's also the issue of Megalixirs being too easy to get late-game.)

By the way, I think my ideal level of healing is comparable to that of a typical Dragon Quest game, except with some multi-target healing available earlier (as it's annoying to have to repeatedly single-target heal to recover from a weak multi-target attack).

Earlier Wizardry games (1-5) also allow you to warp that easily. The catch, however, is that it's a level 7 spell, and Sir-Tech Wizardry games tend to be almost over by the time you get that spell (well, aside from Wizardry 2 where that spell is *required* to get past the first floor). Furthermore, they didn't have the requirement that you had to visit the square before you warp there, unlike most of the Japanese Wizardry spin-offs and Wizardry-likes. (Although, as DRPGs drifted away from copying Wizardry's mechanics, that spell has had a tendency to disappear. You don't see it in Saviors of Sapphire Wings, or in any of the Etrian Odyssey games, though there's still usually some ability or item to warp to town. Stranger of Sword City (Revisited) is the only one I can think of that made the "return to town" item rare; in others, either there's a spell without a major cost, or there's an item you can buy in infinite quantities.)

By the way, Crystal Project's speedrun party is an MDP of 4 Wizards. It turns out that, with the right equipment and spells, you can actually burst down most bosses just by spamming powerful spells. (Note that sometimes you may need to be smart about this, as there are cases, especially on harder difficulties, where the boss will get a chance to mess things up, or you may run out of MP before killing the boss.)

Worth noting that the challenge is significantly harder on PSX (Normal mode) and earlier versions than on later versions. Not only are spells stronger on later versions, but you can just stock up on Ethers to solve all your MP issues. On PSX (Easy mode), you have so much MP that you can just use spells all the time and never run out, though note that WM/BM get significantly more MP than RM on that version/mode.

Hanging out in the Mountain Wilderness is very profitable. Even my level 35 party killing constantly respawning enemies near Bela (who by the way buys and sells back your used up Mana Stones), is about halfway to level 36. Some of this experience is due to just playing the game normally, but the quest rewards' experience pale in comparison to the experience by actually fighting.

Back in the blue encumbrance wise.

I've stopped picking up basic ammo, mainly because ammo tends to result in a lot of weight.

Got a Mystic Spear in Trynton, but it doesn't give my Valkyrie any extra swings or attacks, so I'm sticking with the Stun Rod for now. Given the high HP of enemies that are worth fighting in melee, it's not really worth giving up the paralyze and drain stamina just to attack earlier in the round.

My Ranger has Power Cast, but her magic needs some serious work, to the point where a little power training might be in order. (Earth isn't hard to train a bit, but Air is harder.) Her magic skill is still better than my Valkyrie's, but the Valkyrie is the one with the second attack. (Also the bard, but she loses it when over-encumbered, well and my ranger's Bloodlust gives her an extra guaranteed swing.)

Only true at high levels.

The quest rewards for doing the T'Rang quests were enough to get my party to level 11, and level 10 to 11 is the level that seems to take the longest to gain through fighting. (Notably, the common ratio for XP requirements drops from 2 to 1.2 once you reach level 11, so XP requirement increases slow down, while XP from enemies doesn't.)

There is a certain threshold where experience from fighting enemies slows down, usually in the level 30s. At this point, everybody should have maxed 4 attributes, and unlocked 4 expert skills. I trained these new expert skills to the max, which was at level 35.
At this point, I can explore anywhere I want in the game. I cleared out the Mountain Wilderness, having got my experience up to about halfway to level 36.
My curiousity got the best of me, so I took a dip into the Rapax Rift. After clearing out a set battle, and a random spawn of Rapax Samurai scaled to my level, I am trying to grind two more Staves of Doom from the guaranteed, set Rapax Corpses near Rafe's cell.
I had to separate them, by freezing one, and having the other chase me to near the entrance. This frozen Rapax Corpse can therefore be ground separately for a SOD. Note that, this takes a very long time, as they only have a 10% chance to drop anything at all (90% chance for nothing), and a 2% chance, at best, for the SOD. So I wish myself luck with that.

It looks like my Ranger can get 2 attacks and 2 swings (not counting the bonus from Bloodlust) with the combination of Superman (albeit only at PL2 and no Power Cast) and Haste. That bodes well for when the time comes to switch to the Giant's Sword, which I may go for at level 14 (earliest a Bard can use the Succubus Song).

Cleared out the Mountain Wilderness cave a level 12.

The fight is not that hard if you have decent melee capabilities. The trick is to start combat out of view of the enemies, then charge right into the Death Lord, and then try to kill the Death Lord as quickly as possible. You'll still want to put up Soul Shield quick, and Element Shield in case you get hit with a cloud spell. There are things that can go wrong, like being hit with Death Cloud (if you survive, you'll want to cast Purify Air somehow), or having characters go insane, but with some luck, you should be able to win. (Purify Air is also a good idea against Toxic Cloud.)

Not going to even attempt the Sorceress Queen at this level, though I may stop by just to pick up the Lazurite Stone.

Scorchers can be fun to fight. The battles can take a while (to the point where I started using the Staff of Doom's Death Cloud, and reloading if it fizzles), but if you survive long enough, the enemies will run out of stamina and fall unconscious. Those breath attacks use up a lot of stamina. (I just wish enemy spell casters had to worry about SP, or they could at least have made enemy casters all be stamina casters.)

Tripped an Anti-Magic trap twice on a chest, but fortunately that trap is not a problem if you can find a safe place to rest (or are already in a safe place, like that cave after clearing it).

Ranger still needs a *lot* more spell practice, though her Alchemy is almost high enough to mix Renewal Potions. But it's not Alchemy that she needs; her realm skills are more important at this point.

Bishops aren't ready for level 13, but everyone else is. Note that the Ranger and Valkyrie will get Power Strike, and the Bard and Gadget have new tools (Succubus Song and Strobe Light) that become usable at level 14.

You're doing the opposite of me, an underleveled party vs an overleveled one. The Bard's instruments, and the Gadgeteer's gadgets, become better with time (my Gadgeteer still has to combine a few more gadgets to become competitive in the late game).
I managed to get a Staff of Doom from the first Rapax Corpse near the entrance to Rapax Rift (this took an extremely long time with reloads). I hard saved after that.
I am trying with the second Rapax Corpse, with no luck. I would guess that it takes around 500 tries (10% chance to even get an item, multiplied by the 2% chance for a Staff of Doom).

Thing is, I still have some things to look forward to as I level up. Specifically:
* 13: Power Strike on my hybrids
* 14: 6th level spells. Will aim for Quicksand on the elf and Resurrection on the dwarf, which could, in theory, result in having to delay these level ups.
* 15: Portal spells on hybrids, so that I have 4 instead of 2. (I picked up the 2nd Return book in the Mt. Gigas Caves unexplored territory.)
* 16: Power Cast on the dwarf.
* 17: Power Strike on the dwarf.
* 18: 7th level spells.

Also, my Ranger needs some work on skills. So:
* Probably going to keep Bloodlust as an alternate weapon, but lock weapon switching so she doesn't switch to it by accident (and become unable to switch back without help)
* Still need to have her use spells more for practice. Her Alchemy is good, but her realm skills are not.
* I gave her an ankh to boost her piety to get a few more SP.

There was one encounter against some geomancers that I ended up accepting a death and using Resurrection Powder afterwords. The death was of the bard, which is OK because she was the most ahead of her XP curve, so her loss of XP doesn't slow down the party's leveling. (Although she's now behind my Gadgeteer because of that one fight, even though the Gadgeteer was absent for every fight prior to rescuing Vi.)

I finally bought an Amulet of Life, which is currently on my dwarf Bishop. She's already had to use it like 3 times, including 2 uses in the same battle because ostritch-like enemies killed my ranger twice in the same battle, so it actually was a good investment. (I should have used the Staff of Doom in that fight, especially since each of these enemies had like 400 HP.)

At the next level up, the amulet is going on my Valkyire, as she's going to get the required Artifacts skill, and my dwarf bishop is planning on taking the Resurrection spell, so she'll no longer need the amulet.

Elf bishop now has Alchemy > Psionics > Wizardry > Divinity (Wizardry was highest for a long time, and it's how she qualified for the portal spells). Dwarf bishop is getting close to Alchemy > Wizardry, but isn't yet there. Currently Divinity > Wizardry > Alchemy > Psionics. Elf has 30 Power Cast, Dwarf doesn't have the skill yet. (Main drawback of using a dwarf bishop; the same build on a human would have learned it at level 12 and would be working on dexterity now.)

I agree with you about enemy casters. They can basically cast forever due to unlimited spell points, until they run out of stamina. They should lose a lot of stamina, similar to how the Bard and Gadgeteer "cast" spells. Not to mention, enemy casters seem to not suffer the same HP losses that the party's casters suffer (my Mage is level 35, with 62 Vitality, and only has 118 hit points). I have seen enemy casters way below my level with around 200 hit points.
I'm going for a deathless run, which is why I'm overleveled (level 35 MDPs are even a match for the Mountain Wilderness, the second highest level spawns in the game, with level 34 Molten Scorchers being possible).
The order goes like this (in terms of HP_mul stacks, basically, each stack is about 20 HPs above the next):
Bard>Gadgeteer>Priest>Alchemist>Bishop(if there was one in my party)>Psionic>Mage.
I am guessing that you plan on finishing the game as quickly as possible, especially having a Bishop with all those spellbook skills and realm skills to worry about. Or maybe you're taking the time to grind.
I'm doing the opposite, attempting to completely clear out the game, and get as high level as possible, with the best items possible.
This is why I'm grinding for 3 Staves of Doom, as the Alchemist, Psionic, and Mage have poor one-handed weapon selections (and the last two don't even get shields). Am I supposed to get into close range with these three, with a dagger, wand, or short staff? The damage just isn't there, and the risk is too great.
The first SOD was guaranteed, in the Mountain Wilderness waterfall, and I gave it to my Alchemist, as he's trained for it.
The second one, I got off of the first Rapax Corpse. This took a while, as the 10% chance to drop an item, and 2.4% chance for the SOD, makes for a lot of reloading.
I can't quite seem to get the third SOD. I spent all night reloading, to no avail. I have the last Rapax Corpse paralyzed, one hit away from death, ready to drop the SOD.
I wonder if this comes back to the gambler's fallacy. That is, if you do the same thing enough times, you will get the desired result. It seems logical that I will get the last SOD later rather than earlier, probably on day 2 or 3 rather than 1. This is because I am reducing the chance that the SOD WILL NOT drop with each reload.
Edit: Strangely, I just got the third SOD with enough reloads. Maybe it is true.

I find that deathless just isn't that fun for me, as it feels like it takes away a game mechanic.

(For the CRPG I'm making, I'm going to make it so that death has minimal to no consequences and is easy to recover from. I haven't decided how easy; for example, I haven't decided if the condition will go away on its own after battle (there are some RPGs that do this, like SaGa 2 and False Skies). On the other hand, there's going to be no XP mechanic, so there's no issue of having a character miss out on the XP because they ended a battle dead.)

By the way, right now I'm working on filling the gaps in my bishop's spell list. I think I have everything up to level 3 except for Charm and maybe Mindread on both Bishops. Then I'll just need to get the remaining level 4 spells from Crock, then go to Ferro to get the remaining. (Doing Ferro last out of these merchants because he's in an area that I consider late game, and it will take some time to get through it, not to mention that I'll want a permanent portal there, which means no more wandering portal until level 15.)


In my party, Valkyrie > Ranger > the other mentioned classes.

Also, Amulet of Life is now on my Valkyrie.
The aim is to reach level 24 on the bishops, which is the point where spell failure from being too low a level stops happening, and it at the point where full casters reach the peak of their power. After that, all you get from levels is more SP and better spell penetration.

That's just RNG, and it will always be effectively random unless someone finds a way to manipulate it.

By the way, I mistakenly bought an extra Book of Holding from Sadok. Fortunately, since it's from Sadok, I might be able to get a profit selling the book elsewhere.

(Unlike other merchants, Sadok can sell and buy items for only 90% of the item's value. Well, actually it's usually 90% - 1, with mana stones going for 449 rather than 450 if you sell him any.)

Side note: Why doesn't Vi know anything about Guardia? The first Umpani quest giver talks about that place, mentioning that as being the last mission or something like that, but Vi has nothing, even though she clearly appears in Wizardry 7.