Hello everyone,

i wanted to try out a solo game, and followed this guide:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/374906-wizardry-8/faqs/22809
Short summary: Start the game with a second char, a faierie priest, use that priest to heal up in the first crab fight to train stealth, and then let him die...

I especially liked the fact that this made the very beginning of the game significantly easier. Ok, no true solo play, but sue me :p
Of course i did not realize the problems that would cause...

The first one is that the dead priest halves my effective party level. While this makes the game easier, it seems off, somehow.
The bigger problem i am facing now ist that i cannot pick up the idol in Martens Bluff. As soon as i pick up the Idol the game ends. I would maybe be able to work around this by resuccrecting the dead priest, but this also seems wrong...
Also, since he is male, can i even become a templar without resurrecting him?

I looked far and wide for a savegame editor that allows me to remove the dead guy, but i did not find anything. The one working editor that i found did not allow me to remove him.
Am i screwed and need to restart the hard way, or is there still something i can do?

There is no savegame editor for Wiz8 which allows to reduce or expand the number of characters in a running game,
this would require decent experience with bits&bytes.

While it is still possible to win the game, i think you are srewed up,
because you decided to follow a walkthrough that does not even touch the core problem of a solo run,
not to mention that you accepted to permanently carry a rotting corpse.
(i found a friend in bed severeal weeks after he died, so i know quite well what im talking about)

I recomend to forget the stupid walkthrough and find your own way through one of the best CRPGs ever.



If only Emmons had forseen this.
He propably would have added some mighty undead with the power to turn dead party members into hostile zombies:D

I found the fight against the crabs ingenious. W8's beginning is the best part and very well thought through. To find out how to beat the early game, reaching Arnika, works like a tutorial in that it requires you to learn all the basic technics you need to complete the game. That is even more true for solo play. In fact it almost seems like the solo is required to appreciate all the details that can help you early on, stuff that is simply unnecessary in a 6 man. Like the crab fight: it is designed as a fight of a weak party against a tough opponent. If you fight bluntly without understanding which angles to use against this enemy you'll hardly stand a chance and rightly so.
If you want it easy: why would you play a solo? Beat those crabs or go home it says, loud and clear. That's the guardian at the door and also the best tutorial I ever saw. I love it.

One question: how did you get past Gregor?

Edit: give it a few tries and you'll probably find out how to do it. Personally I enjoyed finding out, which is why I do not want to spoil it for you. If you really want to be told just say so.
As to the idol: Sir-Tech games make sense. If you killed Miguel in Jagged Alliance 2, the rebel that's supposed to rule his people once you got rid of Deidranna the tyrant, he wouldn't show up in the epilogue but you'd rule Arulco yourself. Now assuming you already did that Idol stuff in a prior game: what do you need to do for that "incident" to not happen? I am sure you'll figure it out.

This is an issue for ALL solo runs. The solution is to kill Crock before you pick up the idol. You'll still get gassed and pass out, but since Crock is dead he can't kidnap anyone. It has the added bonus of letting you access the (quite good) quest upstairs in Crock's house.

Just make sure you've bought everything you'll ever want from him, obviously. He's talking about the three crabs on the beach. They're the lowest-level guys in the game, and are in fact good Stealth training. I assume you're talking about the king crab guy who's inside.


As for an actual solution, I'd suggest just starting over. There's no way to get rid of the corpse short of replacing it with another level 1 character. You can still use the crabs on the beach for stealth training, but you'll probably want to kill one of them so you only have to fight two at once rather than three, and you should simply flee and get your stamina and/or health back up instead of using a priest. Alternatively, just use a save editor to pump your character's stealth up to 60 and save yourself the trouble of training.

There is no need to kill Crock because there is no need to take the idol;)

To reach his private quarters, lure some enemies into the shop so he joins and leaves his spot.
Btw this makes a lot more sense in reforged 1.0&1.1 where you can find the 2nd Doom star:D

Yep I misread that - he's only on about Stealth training. Guess that's because I love that 1st fight: passion over brains...
In any case I did not refer to the King Crab but to the three initial crabs @the beach. In my 1st solo I started as a Fairy Ninja just like he did. So I waltzed up to the "easiest enemies ever" AND got myself killed. They kill a lvl1 Fairy Ninja with about three hits, two if unlucky. The Ninja needs one to three hits per crab and he doesn't hit much better than they do. I figured I wouldn't beat the game like that, even if luck or the usage of all my potions would have me win that fight.

Once I had figured out how to not only beat them but beat them easily I started over. New character with a different class, a new strategy for the whole game. It worked and I played through Wizardry for the 1st time ever, with my solo Fighter. All of the petty crab fight. It tought me the very essentials for solo'ing, which is why I hold this fight so dear. That's why I said that the beginning works like a tutorial - without explicit advice having you feel like playing through a dusty manual mind.

That fight, featuring the weakest foes in all the game, is designed to be played as a fight against superior opponents that needs a specific strategy to easily win it. It only reveals that very quality in solos however. In a 6 man it teaches other things mind: by being a simple fight against "high damage" opponents it punishes your mage up front for instance to learn the basics about formations (if that needs to be learned anyway). You can mess around a bit and have an easy opportunity to check out how combat works. Hands down one of the best fights in the game.

It is probably the best 1st fight I ever saw in any game of any genre. It appears so incredibly good: I wonder whether it is a stroke of luck that has it all fit or whether Sir Tech yet again came up with one of these unbelievably thought through game elements based on game designing skills alone.

For some reason everybody that ever learned anything about literature knows that the 1st sentence is extremely important in a novel. I bet some critics can't help but judge a book 90% based on that one sentence. I'd say the same is true for games and especially RPGs, that want you to identify with it's content, possibly telling a story. Strangely enough many designers appear to neglect that entirely and ruin a million dollar game within the 1st five minutes.

How do you avoid taking the idol? (I ask both because I am curious about skips and that I don't like being forced to temporarily lose a character.)

You take the idol to get the helm so Marten gives you the DD voluntarily ...

Well, there is still the insanity effect
so ensure to have already set your portal right in front of the pedestral at AP
and that you have a restauration potion in inventory:D

Stealth will give rogues a somewhat higher(aka not so hopelessly low but still not sufficient) chance among the single class non caster real solos to do it on foot :D



Yes, may provide a good boost for a Wiz8 speedrun

Ah well, i guess i will restart then.
I am curious how i will cope with higher level enemies in the monastery and on arnika road with a true solo run...
A small question is left: Will a female solo character be able to become a templar?

It's interesting and nice to see that an old game like Wizardy 8 has still such an active community.

My understanding is that the answer is as follows:

If you're playing version 1.0.0: The answer is no. Note that this version also has a major bug that, I believe, prevents accessing Ascension Peak, so you shouldn't be playing this version. (Also, it seems rather embarrassing that the developers forgot to consider the case of an all female party, especially when you have woman like Linda Currie and Brenda Brathwaite (now Brenda Romero) credited in senior roles.)

Version 1.2.4: If you have no RPCs, and your party is all female, you can become a templar. (Yes, this would, I believe, mean lesbian sex with a demon.) If you have a male RPC along, you will not be able to become a templar. (Fortunately, you can work around that issue by dismissing him, becoming a templar, and then re-recruiting him.)

Note that the GOG version is 1.2.4, so if you bought the game from here, you don't have to worry about the 1.0.0 issues.