I just finished Wizardry 8 and thought could try to start another playthrough since the charm seems to manage to hold. I was just let down by the very easy difficulty of the end game.

Magic clearly was supposed to be the thing for the enemies in the latter parts (Rapax, Rynjin, Ascension Peak). The problem was once you have Magic Screen, Element Shield and Soul Shield at full power, the enemies have exactly the first turn time to slaughter you; after that they stand no chance because their spells simply don't do anything. There were not enough high melee damage enemies. Al-Sedexus was pretty fearsome with 150 damage per turn, but she didn't like melee too much.

So can anyone recommend a difficulty mod that increases the difficulty mainly in the latter parts of the game, or alternatively a larger content mod incorporating difficulty changes? I was looking some up but the results were not too encouraging. Dodd's mod for example seemed to achieve difficulty by simply making everyone a supermonster, spawning these supermonsters every few minutes and then putting überweapons in the game so you can battle them.



Ps.

I would also like to see a good big showdown on Ascension Peak. You know, free for all between Savant, me, Umpani, T'Rang, Higardi, Rapax, throw in some Don Barlone and Anselm for good measure. Despite their big talk, the only one I ever saw on Ascension Peak was Bela. Was a bit of a disappointment.

WRT the second issue: Ascension Peak was meant to be much more involved, but that part of the game fell victim to the financial/time constraints affecting SirTech.

Reforged 1.1 is quite good.

http://www.postcount.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?47-Wizardry-Series

I've played this now for about 30 minutes maybe and I really want to just ignore pretty much everything story-related in it. Some issues I have:

1) The whole premise that my party are some immortal spirit dudes doesn't fit at all in the game in my opinion. It sort of completely rewrites the original and I don't like that.
2) There isn't a single sentence of proper English, which I think I can overlook. However, not really care has been taken to blend the language with the existing language either. For example, one of the first dialogues has a dude call someone a "smartass". Nowhere in Wiz8 is there such language originally. I also just met Sparkle and umm... Yeah.
3) I already found a returning throwing axe. Doesn't set a good pace for moderate loot.

On the upside the difficulty seems defnitely to have increased from the original.

I think I will keep playing this one anyway and see what it has to offer. Cheers!

Never liked reforged myself.
But if you're still interested I can recommend DoddTheSlayer wiz8 mod. Fortunately (for me) it doesn't change graphics, textures etc. as reforged, but it adds some new quests, items, a lot of NPCs & RPCs (especially in Arnika), instruments/gadgets recpies, changes few RPCs locations and really increases difficulty. There's readme file somwhere in the package and you can always google a bit for any info you need.
Here's the link (just scroll down): http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/wiz8mods.htm
And don't forget to install Daegan's Tweaks package for Dodd's mod (just under Dodd's links) - it fixes few bugs and lowers that insane difficulty at the beginning of your adventure (monastery -> arnika).
Install is simple, just paste & copy & overwrite. No injectors or whatever reforged needs :)

Thanks! I think I completely missed those tweaks originally. Or maybe they didn't exist when I first tried out Dodd. I think I'll stick with Reforged for now, though. It'll probably get better.

Agree about Reforged. It has issues. The creator isn't native English, so there are issues there. Still, it has its own unique charm and is fun ( becomes quite challenging.....)

I just met Madras a little bit ago and it was the last straw: now I just cannot take it seriously anymore, so I'm fine. Also had serious framerate issues with the new textures, but it was luckily fixed by disabling high resolution textures.

The good thing is that basically everything seems to be changed, so you can rediscover stuff again.

Ya. Things are not as they were...........

Flamestryke's is very vanilla like and worth checking out.

Are you sure you were running the Expert difficulty level? I'm a little surprised enemy spells were doing nothing. For me on Expert, even with stacked Magic Screen and the appropriate Shield spells, it always seemed like a few instant deaths, paralysis effects, and so on managed to sneak through. Not impossible to work around, but if the stars align and enough things go wrong at once during the Peak's more stimulating encounters it can get rough. The Djinni of the Clouds + Greater Demon encounter comes to mind. Thank goodness for Purify Air.

I was running Expert yes. I did of course have an occasional death from Death Cloud and similar, but that was maybe 1 in three fights or something like that. The breaths from demons and scorchers were similarly ineffective, doing maybe total of 10 damage per breath. Same for most of the enemy spells; paralyzation didn't usually work at all etc. From Ascension Peak I only remember the giant golem as an opponent that did something.

But maybe we just different views on what is "does something". : ) If I lose one character, say every other turn, that's pretty much nothing. If I take, say, 100 total damage per turn, that's also pretty much nothing. Neither are in any way a danger to the party.

Incidentally, though, from my first playthrough years ago I remembered Ascension Peak to be a pretty dangerous place. Don't know what happened this time. Maybe I was casting shields at power level 1 back then.

I understand. Did you ever settle on a mod to spice things up a little? I'd enjoy reading your comments on any additional ones you've tried since Reforged.

I settled on Reforged only. : )

If you're looking for something, I could recommend that, although I've only played a little (level 10 ATM). If you do play, just be prepared that it has some silly / idiotic stuff in it. On the other hand, you can tell a lot of effort went into it also, and it has many good points. But about difficulty I cannot say yet... In the beginning you have to be quite careful because you can meet Piercer Modais at level 1, so with my half-joker party I should be in a lot of trouble later on, because it apparently gets quite tough.

Unfortunately I didn't see any pure difficulty mods... One would have to make one...

What exactly does Flamestryke's mod change? I last played Wiz8 a LONG time ago and remember using a mod that restores some cut content (mostly/only items) and such, very light, i think it was Flamestryke's but i'm not completely sure.

I'm also looking for some (more) light mods that don't really change the gameplay or story too much, would appreciate some recommendations :)