Formulas for weapon damage, profession hit points, stamina, spell points , nr of attacks per round, max number of swings per attack, carry capacity

Included them into my steam guide:

EDIT: it won't post links ?
google wizardry 8 steam guides .. Its the "Game Mechanics Guide WIP" guide

Not yet. Your account is new, and your rep is still too low. This is one of the ways the site tries to deter spammers and spambots.

Interesting, but I would prefer it if you would upload a copy somewhere other than steam, as I prefer not to follow links to that site.

Anyway, Power Cast actually does matter. Here are some effects that I can confirm:

For long duration spells, the duration will increase. (This can be checked with a spell like Enchanted Blade or Light, even though Light's duration is not affected by power level.) The magnitude of these spells does not change.

For combat spells, the magnitude will increase. This includes spells like Haste and Superman, which will provide more than the usual amount of spell points.

Bonuses to damage/healing are harder to measure because of the large ranges involved, but I am pretty sure they exist.

Power Cast only works for spells cast as spells, not those from items. Unlike with magic skills, the power or cost of the spell does not matter.

I actually consider Intelligence to not be worth increasing at level up unless you are going for Power Cast, which is *definitely* worth it for pure casters who aren't Priests.

Piety seems to have a smaller effect (percentage wise) for higher level characters than for lower level ones; this seems to be particularly apparent for Bishops who know tons of spells.

More later, after I read more of it.

immediately apparent as to why once you read the amount of spell points formula:

Round((Lvl + 1 + Nr_Known_Spells_in_Realm) * ( 1 + Piety*0.02 + Min(125, HighestSpellBookSkill + SecondSpellBookSkill*0.5 + ThirdSpellBookSkill * 0.025 + 4thSpellBookSkill * 0.0125) * 0.02 + RealmSkill * 0.06))

Level of character without penalty even for hybrid casters.

All non-bishop casters only know 1 Spellbook (divine/wizard/alchemy or psionic) so they will use that. Dedicated casters have it as primary skill with *1.25 bonus which translates into a bit more extra maximum spell points than hybrids at maximum skill..

Bishops don't have any of the spellbooks as profession skill but they get the same bonus eventually by summing their skills (with penalty) on all four spell books they can learn. On top of that they can learn up to 4(?) times as many spells (via spellbooks) so mid-endgame they can reach much more spells than the single spellbook dedicated casters.

A few more things:

Relative level makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of spells; this is especially true for instant death spells, which makes them extremely helpful when fighting low level enemies with high HP (like elementals and weaker Rapax).

Alchemy casters are not immune to silence; rather, they retain the ability to cast Alchemy spells (only) when silenced. For a Bishop, casting spells while silenced will always train Alchemy, and never anything else. Silence (and pretty much every other bad status effect, including draining) can be cured by letting the character die.

Encumbrance affects the rate at which you lose Stamina. For spells, so do the spell level and power level.

Having high Power Strike seems to lessen the effect of enemy physical damage resistance; I think Power Cast does so for spells.

Strength bonus is halved for whips; whips also don't get the 2x damage for hitting sleeping enemies.

Stamina costs scale with the weight of the weapon; this makes the Tripleshot Crossbow extremely taxing on the character using it,

I also disagree with your choices for the Bishop. Bishops should max INT and SPD first, and should ignore weapons entirely; if you need melee combat, have somebody else do the job or summon an elemental. Also, other pure casters (except maybe Priest) should go for Power Cast as well. What about class changed characters? (This is one mechanic that you completely ignore in this document; how is the attack rating of a character who changed class from Priest to Lord (for example) calculated?)

I know about the whip/chain/vampire chain/cat of nine tails. They behave like ranged weapons for the STR damage bonuses but will use the mace weapon skill ..Still nice to train mace + shield on priest/bishop from back line before they get tough enough to move to the first line ..

Yes kill effects work best vs lower level enemies. Why on earth would I want to insta-kill low threat (lower level much lower threat) punchbags I can train combat skills against instead ? I hate the passive kill skills and effect on weapons with a passion.

I really like high STR bishops. Mauler on bishops can do tons of damage and benefit from the extra damage vs disabled targets ..

Specialist casters kind of lack the bishop spell pool to keep casting non stop in longer fights (and I like long fights since I train high melee and ranged on all characters) so high STR and DEX makes them "decent" against targets highly resistant to spells .. Its a bit more grindy - but the end result is casters that are "good enough" at casting (the buffs are the most important) and also relevant in both melee and ranged combat eventually ...

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On dual class - since in my entire Wiz8 career I have never bothered to multiclass once I wasn't very curios about it.
As a starting point I would guess it would sum say number of warrior lvls * warrior contant + number of gadgeteer levels * gadgeteer constant + nr of caster level * caster levels.. But you'd have to test it to make certain ..

Same for hitpoints HP for 5 levels of fighter with X vit + HP for 6 levels of alchemist with X vit + ...

That may be fine if the encounter is against a reasonably small number of relatively harmless low level enemies, but that is not always the case. In particular, here are some cases that come up:

* Encounter is against a hoard of Rapax, many of them low level (but with high HP). These Rapax can have a lot of HP, causing the battle to take a rather long time, risking exhausting your resources, and even lower level Rapax can do significant damage. Also, maybe there are other enemies that are serious threats; getting rid of the lower level ones allows you to focus on higher level ones. One thing to note is that you can't save during battle, which can be a problem if you need to go somewhere or get unlucky toward the end of the fight.

* Encounter includes some powerful enemies, and they start summoning elementals. Elementals may be a low level, but they can hit really hard with their physical attacks, and they have a lot of HP. In this case, you *will* want to disable them as soon as possible, and an instant kill spell works well here. (Also, note that elementals are weak against the opposite element, and the only element they have high resistance to is their own, so spells tend to work well on them; I happen to like using Turncoat on them.)

Remember, low level doesn't always mean low threat, and prolonging a fight is not a good idea if some of the enemies are dangerous. To me, I find that I want to know *all* the mechanics, not just the ones that come up with my playstyle; it might give me new ideas, for one, or it could lead to an exploitable glitch.

For HP, the way it seems to work is as follows:

Base HP is the sum of the Base HP gained from all class levels, plus the Base HP gained from the first level up (in other words, the first level counts twice), minus any that have been drained or lost forever. Vitality modifies this amount. (Note that I may be off on the mechanics of drained/lost hit points, since I avoid losing HP to disease and I always cure Draining (which is quite rare) before the next level up.)

One thing to test: Consider these two characters:
1. Starts as a Priest, changes to Lord at level 2.
2. Starts as a Lord, changes to Priest at level 2.

Do 1 and 2 have the same Attack Rating at level 2? I note that 2 has more HP, but 1 gets spells earlier (and if both characters level only as Lord from then on, will get one more spell pick total).

Edit: One more thing. When testing expert skills, make sure that the character has unlocked the skill normally; if you get the skill from an item, or if you hack the skill without changing the stat to 100, the skill will not provide any benefit.

Both your examples are valid.

Sadly the mass kill spells and high level kill skills become available at a point where my party rarely cares about enemy damage output anymore .. Elementals hit like trucks, but after a certain point (high party level) they will struggle very had to penetrate .. With my heavily melee & ranged combat focused parties I rarely complain about amount of enemy HP by that time. Usually unless the enemies have huge amounts of HP or damage absorption - very often only my highest initiative guys will get a chance to train melee skills since all targets in melee range will die before all my chars had a chance to take a swing .. Particularly irritating when instakill procs and punchbags die even earlier .. Using training weapons (self sabotaging) or putting hard hitters on defensive mode is sometimes required to give the other guys a chance to swing and train ..

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Yes at character creation they receive hit points as for two level ups. That's why in the hitpoint formula it multiplies by LvL and not by (LvL-1) . At level 3 there were only 2 level ups but you get one for "free" at level 1 ..

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I would also GLADLY read up on all mechanics :) if that knowledge was available. But since I must "work" (time consuming/tedious ..) for getting it, it becomes a question of interest vs effort :) .. I will focus (do the work) on the things that interest me most :) .

"reversed engineerd"
meaning from looking at the code or based on ingame statistics?
If based on code the question arises whether you could help me to change some mechanics,
e.g. to remove friend/foe recognition for aoe spells.

However some nice findings, but i do not agree will all comclusions ,
e.g. speed is very useful for classes with critical strike skill
and can be even more for characters with similar chance from class(nin, ran, mon and at minor degree fighters)
as it allows to score crits/knockouts befor enemies can act at all.
and chances to cause such side effects increases with the number of attacks.
last not least a decent value in snakespeed(30+) allows characters to act 1st even though the party moved,
at higher levels(50++) my dual shuriken wielding ninjas also often(at full stamina)
get an additional attack with 2 swings as the very 1st action.

To set a fixed value for spell dmg with CF, set dice multiplier and sides to zero and use only dmg bonus.
(requires a somewhat recent version of CF)

Regarding the discrepancy monster vs characters attack values:
if you run the unpatched game(v1.0) with cmWiz8trn (dropbox.com/s/av32dabws5kkbpu/cm-wz8tr__upd_readme.zip?dl=0)
the ingame messages visible after [Ctrl]+[C] indicate that the game adds a random value on every attack roll.
Monsters may just get a different range for their rng, or use a diferent algorithm.
While that may appear obsolete effort to code on 1st sight, it may save time when it comes to balancing what you coded.

Also check this thread for perhaps more info: kamrad.ru/showthread.php?threadid=58460

I did not look at the code. I used a save editor to edit character attributes/skills then loaded in game and checked effects..
With a lot of tedium I managed to figure out some of the formulas ..

Tried what you propose for spells. Worked for weapon damage not for spells.

Yes speed is a factor in both the number of attacks and nr of swings (both formulas listed in guide). I'm not dissing SPD, just noting that, unlike the other attributes you can get massive amounts of SPD party wide from the haste drum/spell/potion/scroll.. Use haste, save the attributes UNLESS you really want snake speed (extra initiative).
YES YOUR DESIGNATED COMBAT PROTECTION CASTERS SHOULD GET SNAKE SPEED.
Get protections up before you die in turn 1.

The russian forum - lets hope google translate is up for the task :) ..

-his/their skill train formula seems plausible (fits with my separate skill train tests ).
Might clean it up and put it in my guide (with reference) ..

Chance to train 1/8 of a skill level up formula based on current amount of skill and governing attributes

X = ((100-SKILL) * ((GovAttr1 + GovAttr2) / 2)) * 0.01
If RND(100) < X Then
count++
If count > 8 then
{ count = 0 ; SKILL++ }

The (100-SKILL) term explains why it becomes ever harder to train skills as they get higher ..

The calculation is always used pure skill value. Those. bonus + 25% is not included, and are not taken into account allowances from the weapon (rings, etc.). Thus the wearing of bonus stuff does not slow down the growth of skill.

Still that doesn't explain why alchemy trains faster using higher level mixing recipes. The ACTION must have its own modifier (an extra multiplier on the skill train formula) ..

Then try 1 sided dice to get fixed dmg, i.e. x*1+ y
May also require to use a spell which does use a missile model and to keep spell with hardcoded side effects out,
in case i think its best to create a clone from a single target spell like energy blast.

btw spell effectivity is (also) directly tied to mana cost,
if you assign e.g. 250mana/PL the spells tend to neglect realm resistance of 100 even for monsters 50+ lvls above caster.


I mostly play(test) modded games with enemies/scenarios that literally force to get protection spells up asap,
else instant wipeouts may happen as enemies e.g. use spells with 200 mana/PL or have maxed casting power.
(my lvl 18+ party just had "unpleasant" (test)encounters with lvl 60 Nebdar and 8-12 lvl ~30 allies,
after two 1st and one 3rd round wipeouts i try the "tigger combat&run away to pull" exploit next,
which would not be possible with slower party)

plenty of good information on that russian forum.

CTHit & Chance to penetrate formulas. Lacks level difference which I feel is a factor ( rarely miss in melee vs lower level enemies) .

The role of BaseArmorClassBonuses (SPD,SHIELD, STEALTH, REFLECTION, CLOAK, RINGS ..) - help you dodge attacks. Being disabled resets this to -5.

Intelligence of both attacker and target is a minor factor in both formulas :) ..

The AC amount on Armor Gear + Armorplate + StoneSkin spell - extra roll to penetrate.

You can assign up to 500spp/PL in CF which instantnatly increses mana to also 500,
those spells work when cast at PL 1 but i doubt a PC will get 1k spp in a realm for PL 2.
However a "real" 150spp/PL spell at PL 3 for 450 spp also works fine here,
and a 444spp/PL spell assigned to an item at PL 7.

Regarding the overflow of attributes and resistances,
i strongly recommend the 1.26 exe or one of its derivates which allow much higher values for both before they overflow.

p.s. idc much about training effect of such high lvl spells,
but did not notice an increase in skills even only partially equivalent to the increase in mana costs.
Besides such spells should be limited to spell level 7 or even better to unique one shot items,
and to a point in the game when there was already plenty of opportunities to train whatever you like.
btw training: behind the collapsed roof near RFS-81

The russian tester : forum tag "Silicoid" dup up a lot more (PLAUSIBLE) information than I did by dissasembling various portions of the game code.
Will have to clean it up and do a massive update to my guide ..