Some cents on the hintbook:
While it may contain useful info for Wiz8 beginners, there are also a ton of questionable recommendations,
e.g. take Table 1.1 where the mimimum attribute requirements for a class are all considered key attributes,
which is plain wrong in my book,
resulting in recommending either suboptimal race class combinations (ranger - rawulf/felpurr; monk - rawulf)
or missing recommendations (ranger - hobbit; samurai - hobbit/human; monk - human/elf; alchemist - fairie;
psionic - gnome/hobbit/felpurr/mook; mage - elf/gnome/hobbit)

Next major flaw is the "3/4 rule"
Wiz 8 has power skills which are unlocked when the controlling attribute reaches 100.
You want to unlock these asap for most classes, like powercast for all casters,
instead of tickling ponts into other attributes on lvl up that should stay at what they were raised to during creation,
it is highly recommended to put all points on lvl up into such attributes to get the powerskill asap,
also take care during creation that the remaining attribute points until 100
are multiple of 3, with the exception of Int as the game has 1 instance where you get a +5 int bonus.

I didnt check any further atm, but iirc the hintbook contains a lot more statements which are questionable for Wiz8 experts
I guess the people who wrote it didnt really play the game, at least not enough to give reliable recommendations,
like also in a couple other hintbooks for other games, these are often printed before the game is released,
and therefore lack the experience of the gaming community, perhaps even the testplayers.

Regarding Kaucukuvnik's Wizardry 8 Enhancements mod,
the "fast animations" will make the game considerably harder on continous combat,
i guess even biogoo, the wiz8 speedrun WR holder(iirc 70min23sec) who plays on continous
would not manage to issue his commnds fast enough when monster anims last only for a fraction of the original.

If anybody likes W4st's transparent compas mod, there is a mod file which makes the ui even more transparent,
find it in this archive:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/7ztx3jyl0cuhvn6/file
Check the readme file on how to add/remove one of the 4 micro mods to the game.

p.s.
Numbers in line 2 and 3 of the file 3DVideo.CFG should ofc match a resolution your system can handle,
if not sure/to be on the safe side, you can also run 3Dsetup.exe and select one of the resulutions it offers.

What is the advantage of OpenGL vs. D3D for W8?

My competence is insufficient to explain the technical differences ootb,
in case check en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL_and_Direct3D

In game the main difference is that you can not adjust gamma with opengl,
in opposition to selecting DX6 or 7(=D3D) in 3Dsetup.exe.

The appearance of things in close and medium range appears the same for me,
the screenies i just made to upld them here look so identical in every aspect that i saved myself the effort.
Afair the drawing of max distance elements is slightly different.
but I dont remember how exactly and atm dont have the time and/or party lvl
to leave the swamp and check it out in Savant City (Reforged mod)
which has brighter ambient light and the highest visibily range in the mod(2k).

Performance of opengl and directX also appears rather equal in the mostly unmodded Swamp,
could be different if a loc has high poly count and tons of dynamic (moving) objects, again no time to test,
while a quick check of Softtware(MMX) was painful, even the cursor did not move smoothly.

From my experience OpenGL was way smoother. I had stuttering in Arnika with DirectX, especially during combat with lots of enemies. Afterwards it really depends on your system specs and settings, on my gaming laptop OpenGL worked best.
For sound/music I really recommend leaving the Miles Fast 2D Positional Audio. Other audio settings had problems with sound effects (door sounds not working etc...).
With VSYNC OFF the game is incredibly laggy when many characters appear on screen. Slowing to a crawl. Turning it ON in game didnt do the trick, I also had to turn it ON in my Nvidia control panel.

Thanks for the great info...

Settings that I used for my recent install on Linux (assumes a working Vulkan driver, and xorg rather than Wayland):
* Keep nGlide installed
* In the nGlide settings, switch to Vulkan rather than DirectX (this removes the need for anything like DXVK, and is the one setting that's most likely different from what you would want on modern Windows)
* Again in the nGlide settings, you want the "keep desktop resolution" and "keep original aspect ratio" (or whatever it's called) options set (unless, for some reason, you *want* to have the screen stretched and distorted)
* If you're using Lutris, I recommend a fshack version of wine to prevent the resolution switches.

For older Linux systems, particularly those without functioning Vulkan, I generally recommend installing mfc42 via winetricks to run the configuration program, and I think I've found DirectX 6/7 to run better than OpenGL for some reason.