Encountered my first batch of creeping coins today. One thing I noticed is that their breath weapon seems to miss. A lot. While this is quite nice for my characters who don't yet know Mahalito (and Katino seriously sucks in this version), that's a blessing.

However, is breathing supposed to be able to miss like that? I never played the Apple II version, only the DOS version, and in that game breathing never missed. It always did at least 1 damage, which could make creeping coins a serious threat to early game characters.

Unrelated: is Katino really supposed to be this unreliable? It was one of the best spells in the game in the DOS version, often knocking out all but one or two of a batch of six kobolds. Here I'm lucky if it knocks out one or two.

I distinctly remember the breath of Creeping Coins? hitting for 0 damage all the time, making them basically harmless. Hence, they're great for experience.

(Note that this is not the case in Wizardry 4, where said breath weapon would always deal 1 damage, but there that works in your favor.)

KATINO is one of the spells that was rather terrible in Apple 2 Wizardry 1, to the point where they gave the spell a boost in later games, including Wizardry 2. Other spells like this are LATUMAPIC (combat-only in Apple 2, only works for that battle) and HAMAN/MAHAMAN (you don't get to choose the effect; each one has only 3 effects. MAHAMAN can teleport away the enemies (HAMAN can't), and neither spell can revive (though the effect is coded, but bugs); furthermore, the spell has a 1 in level chance of causing the character to forget spells).

Ah OK. Maybe that was a change they made for the DOS version as well, or I'm just misremembering (though I do remember frantically hoping my mages can get off a Mahalito against the creeping coins before they breathed my poor mages to death). Ah, ok. Works as Advertised then. Though it would be nice if they brought in some of the rebalances from other versions. I always found Katino being highly effective to be one of the great things about Wizardry. Meant that Samurai and Bishops could actually provide some useful magical support for one thing.