First time in the castle, immediately got into a battle with 24 rapax.. Ok fine, I won. Turned the corner, another battle with 19 rapax, hmm seems a bit excessive but ok. I noticed in the battle log, Ferro being attacked. I rushed over to him quickly, barely saving his life. Now he wanders the hallways, he never stands by the armor counter.. It seems rapax here respawn? I cant go anywhere without a battle with at least 15 rapax, and somehow Ferro is always involved. I looked at a few strategy guides, none mentioned this, only that he has the best armor in the game, not the tight-rope you have to constantly walk saving his life. Is there any way to get him to stand at the armor shop and not be attacked constantly?

What do you expect from a game that was already hard core when released in 01,
with roots, incl its devs, back to the 80ies when crpgs were really tough, or brutal in terms of today.
You gotta earn the right to buy from the guy with a whole assortments of uber items (for which you would have to buy at least 3 dlcs today),
The harder it is the better the success experience :D

Anyway, "wanders the hallways" sounds good, indication he "is aware" to be at the wrong spot and probably has pathing issues.

Try to sleep for 72h in the location, hoping the game will reset him to his position via teleport.
Its not granted to work but your best bet without using external forces, aka CF's dll injection and script editing.

There are two 99+% safe places to camp in rapax castle:
if you received the armory key, go inside and close the door,
else raise the lift and camp in the "secret" path to the cellar, right before the game asks whether you want to continue down.
Best use x ray to check if the coast is clear before you visit Ferro.

Hardcore is all fine and good with me. Believe it or not, I was around in the 80's as well, so I remember what games were like back then. Infocom games anyone? anyone?... no.. lol. Anyway, a little consistent internal world-building/lore is the slight quibble I have with the decision to make the rapax attack one of their own race, who has a fully functioning shop INSIDE their heavily guarded compound. Did they not mind/notice for months while they set up shop, only to be caught off guard when I trotted in. Then the decision was made " Hey hurry up, lets kill our own blacksmith!" Actually in a Machiavellian sense, it could make some sense to kill the blacksmith before he in turn, helps me by selling and crafting great gear. I seriously doubt, having myself been involved in storycraft for the better part of 20 years, that is what the developers had in mind. Great as this game has been, the story, plot is its weakest point.

Luckily I did clear out the floor with Ferro able to survive, and it doesnt seem they respawn unless you rest. I saved enough magic nectar that fortunately I dont have to rest very often.

Yeah this is one of those issues due to factions in the game. If he is actually rapax faction then he would attack you as well. So he is not so when the combat starts he gets dragged into it as well.

Sirtech was on their last legs and there a number of inconsistencies like this in the game.

There is an easy explanation for why things go as they do at Ferros shop:
Ferro is not authorized to sell his stuff to a hostile faction, but does so out of greed.

We have uncountable irl examples for that greed, on a private lvl US gun shop owners dont close their business because their customers go on a rampage, not to speak what happens on national lvl with consent/support of governments.



In his Wizardry 8 Reforged Mod, Qusari placed Ferro in the Rift and far away from any random patrol to avoid the hassle for players.
It is just a lil more difficult to get there :D

That explanation could be true, but this happened before I had every spoken to him, let alone bought anything from him.
Would you say the reforged mod is worth playing through? I dont know much about it.

Yes, my explanation has a serious flaw, more a rhetoric move;) As abbayaraa said Ferro's faction assignment is the culprit.
it would have been possible to give him the "unassigned" faction and constantly fire a "desposition friendly" command via script,
but that script only works out of combat and kicks in a few millisecs after a battle ended, so i guess the devs did not trust their engine enough to always trigger the command fast enough.


Qusari's Reforged Mod has a ton of entirely new terrain, i.e. not clones of existing locations or parts of them rearranged,
iirc all existing locations have been retextured, tons of new monsters, represented by new models, individual icons for vast majority of items, etc,
while Frostguard's White Wolf Mod has the imo most sophisticated scripting, as LUA for Wiz was more advanced in 2012
and in Dodd's Dodd the Slayer Modthe constant spawning of deadly high lvl mobs is unmatched.
That said, some of the bosses in Reforged are quite op, so its more for those who find the vanilla game far too easy,
and/or have played it so often that they are hungry for change in appearance/style,
but it cant hurt to give it a try, unless you are obsessed by ending games once you started them.

In case find a dld for Reforged on the wiz8 mods dld page at zimlab.com case, make sure to apply all fixes you find there for the mod!
Applying the NPC database fix in a running game creates a hidden inconsistency in the game data,
i.e. it may appear to work fine but you will most likely run in a bug with high potential to brake the playthrough.


If you have issues to get Reforged running check the readme, its kind of obligatory anyway.
If that is not sufficient check the "cant get Reforged mod running" etc threads in the "Wizardry Series" subsection on postcount.net forum, or post a question (reply make take > 1 day, so be patient).
There is also a "spoilers for Reforged" sticky thread.


p.s. Dodd the Slayer can also be found on zimlab,
while the link for White Wolf is easiest to find in the "dlds and helpful links" sticky on postcount

Thanks for the info townltu. The difficulty in this game is kind of strange. I would say the two hardest battles I've had were a random encounter on Arnika road, and the Rapax rift where you fight 30 of them if you arent a templar. The "bosses" dont really pose much of a threat because its a 6 on 1 fight. Even Nessie was pretty easy, I was expecting her to be quite diffcult. Early on, I wouldve rated this game as "moderately difficult" to "difficult". But mid to late game, Id knock that rating down to medium, or possibly easy. As long as you have the right buffs on, your melee and heavy hitters pretty much outclass anything put in front of them. Or mine did at least.

So if I read you correctly, the Reforged mod doesnt have an ending to the game? Do you just keep going?

Question: Why does this happen with Ferro but not Sadok? Why couldn't they make Ferro like Sadok, who is neutral if combat breaks out (won't help you, but won't fight you either), yet can still be traded with?

Yeah thats a good point. Although, Sadok does turn hostile once the rest of the T'rang do as well, but thats at least consistent.

@shortfuse41
The ending in Reforged is the battle with the Dark Savant, but it does not lead into the vanilla games endgame sequence that shuts you out, so in theory you could continue playing, although it makes little sense, perhaps except for the Mr Q sidequest.

Note: As pointed out in the mods readme, NPCs usually only go through their "give quest" talk 1 time,
so it is highly recommended to take notes of at least their text that is written in all caps.
Optionally make a hard save before you talk to at least one of the new NPCs, so you can always go back and read their text again.
The game journal may provide a general idea for the new quests but the journal entries are limited and each one "eats up" a slot for a global variable, which are capped to a total of 1k and therefore quite precious.


@drgreene
There are some differences between Sadok and Ferro.
Wiz8 NPCs are monsters who also have an NPC script assigned,
when you spot them they act as the monster according to its parameters,
if these parameters do not make them hostile you can speak to them and the NPC assigned to the monster acts according to its script and NPC parameters, like e.g. the "initial attitude to party" value. (iirc 60 for Sadok and 80 for Ferro)
Ferro monster is placed on the map with friendly attitude to party, and aligned to the Templar Rapax Faction.
All spawns that are generated at rapax castle main lvl are Common Rapax, killing them will not change Ferro's attitude.

Sadok is placed as neutral monster in Lower Martens Bluff, and his NPC script prevents him from trading with the party if it did not ally with the trang during interaction with Zant
(Sadoks NPC script block 0 & 1, fact conditional jump to block 122)
Btw Sadok will become friendly over the time if you do the quests for the trang,
as also the younger trang that spawn from the spaceship and walk into the outgoing teleporter.

Sounds like you know a lot about the game's scripts.

That, of course, leads me to ask a question that seems to have no answer: What, exactly, causes Z'Ant to become hostile (for parties allied to both the Umpani and the T'Rang)?

@dtgreene
Zant "knowing" that you also work for the umpaini and turning hostile is based on the Fact aka global variable ID#753, named "Fact_trang_you_are_busted", check the fact related jump in his NPC script block 1
During testplay with an external script that lists all changes of global variables, and other stuff running behind the curtain, in the games message window at the bottom,
this variable randomly switched its value when walking the streets of Arnika,
at a spot that is not covered by a mechanism which senses the presence of the party(and therefore could be used to trigger smth)
and the fact change could not be reproduced with the last save during many attempts.

My "its entirely random" conclusion was recently confirmed by myoffice91, the guy who works on the code to enhance exe and modding capabilities.