give the bow to someone else and keep using her gun but its your game mate

I thought about that, but it seems like a lot of work for not a lot of benefit. Having 5 realms for the Alchemist makes it a little bit easier to focus. My Alchemist has the 4 elemental realms in the high 70s, and Divine realm is catching up slowly(only Heal Wounds is used occasionally, as well as Draining Cloud, only at level 2 in the green). I generally don't bother too much with summons, as they can occasionally get in the way of ranged attacks. Not to mention, there is a height limit. If I go outside of an Alchemy class(Alchemist, Ranger, Ninja), I would lose a level as an Alchemist, causing my Alchemy spells to develop that much slower(I'd have to wait past level 18 for level 7 Alchemy spells). I could do a Bishop for a few levels, for the Mental realm magic, but he would level slower for those levels. It would mess up his experience track, I think.
I noticed that too, that I didn't immediately get all the realm skills at the beginning. I slowly got access to all 6 realms as I leveled up. I think that you get that realm at a new breakpoint level when you can first pick a spell from that realm.

Who's going to use the Tripleshot Crossbow? My 4 casters(Priest/Alchemist/Psionic/Mage) are limited to Throwing and Sling, so they use Slings and Spike Stones for now, I'm going to get them Wrist Rockets and better stones when I get to Crock/Ferro.
The Bard has Bloodlust, making her a beast at melee, who can also use magic for buffs/debuffs/damage. She can't use ranged weapons, although I could uncurse her(2 characters have this ability), but that would be a lot of work every battle doing that. I anticipate having to fight a lot of bats and Juggernauts on the A-T Road, on the long road to Trynton, which is why I'm stockpiling Magic Nectar when I can't safely rest(I think there's only one really good place to rest, at that treasure chest in the NE corner of the map). Due to the heavy melee battles I anticipate, I think the Bloodlust will be very handy.
The Gadgeteer does get a bonus to Modern Weapons, and she starts with the Omnigun, but in my experience from past parties, the Blinding effects of the Omnigun really make it annoying to kill enemies. Blinding sometimes causes enemies to run away, stealing my experience. For a MDP, that's the last thing you want: Blinding, Terror, Slow all make it super annoying for fast kills.

I don't consider this a practical strategy either, but I do find it interesting that you actually can increase an Alchemist's Mental Magic skill, provied that some Alchemist somehow knows a Mental spell, despite there being no Mental spells on the Alchemist's class list.

I believe the rule for raising a Realm skill is that, at level up, one of the the following must be true:
* The character knows at least one spell of that realm
* The character has the opportunity to learn a spell of that realm

It is possible for a character to not qualify for the spell at level up, but later meet the skill requirements and then use a book to learn a spell of that realm. I believe such a character won't be able to raise the realm skill until the next level up, but I could be wrong.

There actually is a bug that can crash the game under the right circumstances. Specifically, if:
* You cast Remove Curse from the inventory (not from the main screen)
* The spell backfires and hexes the caster
* The loss of SP from the hex reduces the caster's current SP for some realm below 0
then the game will crash with an assertion.

(Hex lowers all attributes and skills by 20, with derived stats immediately changing; note that this can kill a character even if the character has Guardian Angel active. I don't know whether a Valkyrie can cheat death in this situation.)

Be aware that this weapon uses up a *lot* of Stamina. The Stamina you use per attack is dependent on the weapon's weight, the Tripleshot Crossbow is heavy, and the two extra "swings" per attack you get don't help, as each one causes more Stamina loss.

I got post locked again. Maybe when I get more Rep points like you, I can post more. Who knows?

I think it's rule #2, because my Priest was able to put skill points into the Fire realm before he learned Light, which I didn't think was important early on.
I think uncursing every battle takes the fun out of the game. From a role-playing perspective, I anticipate a lot of melee combat on the AT Road, so my Bard has Bloodlust equipped.
My Gadgeteer will take breaks from her TS Crossbow and use the Lightning Rod to train Engineering. When low on Stamina, she will defend. I did pump her Strength to 96, so she has decent Stamina. My Priest also has Stamina and Rest All.

yes I would replace Bloodlust for one of the better swords [like Fang] which don't lock you into melee... stopping the range attack from improvement

a late game ombigun can also stun and kill \ use different ammo and is all round a better weapon than a trippleshot

It's not just that rule. A character who starts as a Psionic, learns Mind Stab, and then changes to an Alchemist can still put points into Mental Magic, and can still improve that skill, despite not being able to learn any Mental spells from their current class.

But it can still cause Blindness, and does so more frequently than other status ailments, and once you're past the early game, you really don't want enemies running away and prolonging the battle.

It's enough that. if I mod this game, I might choose to replace the blindness effect with something else. Any ideas? (Not fear, and not something that would be gamebreaking (definitely not Kill) or useless (definitely not disease).

By the way, does disease actually do *anything* to enemies or NPCs? Or draining, for that matter? (Note that I'm using NPCs strictly to refer to those not in the player's party; in other words, Vi Domina only counts as an NPC when she isn't in your party for this purpose.)

yes disease drops their combat stats and can damage hit points but insane is the best result ime

at max level the ombugun

Blind 10%
K.O. 10%
Kill 2%
Sleep 1%
Paralyze 1%
Poison 1% (Str 5)
Hex 1%
Disease 1%
Frighten 1%
Drain HP 1%
Drain Stamina 1%
Drain SP 1%
Nauseate 1%
Insane 1%

yes they do tend to run around if Blind \ fear but the important point is they don't fight your team while doing that... its your game mate

Do you have any specifics, like *how* it drops stats? (Remember, this is for NPCs/enemies, not party members.)

The problem is that this prolongs the battls, and as you should already be aware, Wizardry 8 battles tend to be *long*, and the game doesn't let you save in the middle. Hence, assuming the battle isn't exceptionally difficult, you will progress more slowly if you inflict blind or fear on the enemies. It is therefore faster to just not bother with those status ailments.

To put it another way, the only time I've found these status ailments to be useful is when first getting through Arnika Road; every other time, they're unwanted and are just wastes of time.

Honestly, I'd even prefer something like nausea, which makes the enemies only sometimes miss their turn, but at least doesn't make them run away and prolong the fight.

(At least fear on party members isn't nearly as bad as in Wizardry 7, where the afraid character can run away, and a successful run ends the battle with no XP awarded (extremely frustrating if you were about to win the fight) and be sent back a fair distance and have to figure out where you ended up.)

By the way, fear has been in the series since Wizardry 1, but the status ailments was unused until Wizardry 5.)

Also, please don't call me "mate".

I seem to have a post character limit, until I get enough rep points, so no long quotes.
I just raided Cierdan's Tomb last night, portaled in, and found nobody can use the Demonsbane, and the Demonsting is mediocre, so I sold everything to Burz, then portaled back to Arnika.
I'm keeping Bloodlust for my Bard until I can get Fang or the Light Sword and regain my ranged options. Anything else seems to be inferior to Bloodlust.
The Tripleshot Crossbow isn't bad if you have a Priest casting Rest All/Stamina. It will train the Gadgeteer's Ranged Combat/Bow skills nicely. With good ammunition later on, I imagine it will be a death machine.

I know you're female. I'm male. I'm not Australian. I won't call you mate. Anyways, I got the best armor and spellbooks for the party, as well as bought plenty of Magic Nectars for that long AT Road. My Bard and Gadgeteer are both at level 16, my Bard has maxed Strength for Powerstrike, which will help with the Bloodlust wildly Berserking for double damage. My Gadgeteer is at 99 Strength, very close to max. I am trying to train my casters for what lies beyond, plenty of melee battles.

I think I have just completely cleaned out the shops(He'Li, Braffit, Antone, Anna), and I have found that enemies randomly spawn from 3 locations:
1. The Savant Tower(various Savant machines)
2. The Spaceport(various Savant machines)
3. The crashed spaceship(various Higardi Thieves, the strongest being Higardi Brigand)
This is my only chance of leveling up at this point.

for the record, I'm male, I am Australian and didn't call him mate either ;)

when you leave Arnika are you planing to head north towards Umpani or east into Trynton?

Are you, ok, DT? I honestly didn't mean to piss you off, and I'm not speaking for Norway, but I don't think he meant any harm either. How are you doing with your characters?