I can't find a manual for this game, and there doesn't seem to be any tutorials. This game is Wizardry Labyrinth of Lost Souls. Maybe I missed something. If so, could someone point me to where they might be?

In the mean time, I'll try to look for wikis and guides.

I might also ask some questions.

I'm not aware of any, though there are various pieces of information you can find online..

I have found some mis-information online; mainly, one FAQ that lists the spells gets a few of them wrong. In particular (at least from what I remember):
* Graupel Hail: Hits only one enemy, not a group.
* Ice Burst: Hits all enemies, not a group.
* Smite: Hits a group, not all enemies.

(The game seems to follow the convention that "Field" spells hit a group of enemies, while "Burst" spells hit all enemies.)

Anyway, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I managed to find a guide, so most of my questions have been answered.

This might not be the game for me.

What is ash and what does it do? It came up in the guide but its not explained much beyond it can cause you to lose characters when trying to revive them.

It seems that classes can do other stuff besides fight. It seems that you need a bishop to identify magic items, thieves to safely open chests. Priests and Bishops can heal.

When you try to revive a character, whether by going to the temple or casting a higher level priest spell, there is a chance that it can fail; if this happens, the character's body will turn to ash. I believe high VIT will make the resurrection more likely to succeed, and the hidden stat "energy" also plays a role. (Energy, from what I've read, increases at level up, and decreases when level drained and revived; it apparently affects stat growth at level up.)

If a character's body has been turned to ash, you can try to revive the character again; the catch is that, if it fails, the character is lost forever. In this case, you have no choice but to delete the character, and if it happens in town, I think the game will delete the character for you (meaning you lose everything they're carrying). In any case, this is not a good situation to be in, and you might want to reload a save. For this reason, it is a good idea to save *before* trying to revive a character, in case it fails and the character is lost forever.

If the leader (the character you select as the main character at the start of the game) is lost, it's game over; the screen will turn black, a message (in Japanese in the PS3 version; I don't know if that's fixed in the PC version) will be displayed, and you will then get a Game Over screen and have to restore your last save.

It's also worth noting:
* The 5th level priest spell "Touch of Life" will not work on characters who have been turned to ash; you need to use the 8th level "Restore Body" spell in that case (if you want to use priest spells).
* The 8th level mage spell Wish has the capability of reviving characters without the VIT loss (and possibly without the risk) mentioned above, so once you get it, it may be the preferred way to revive dead characters. It *does* use up all your 8th level mage SP, but that can be restored with a simple inn trip. I may post a more detailed rundown later, but with respect to the points you mentioned:
* You can get items identified at the item shop, but this can be expensive so having a Bishop is preferable (especially since you can convert money into experience in this game by tithing at the church).
* Ninjas can also safely open chests, but according to some reports are less effective than thieves. Alternatively, you could just cast Divine Trap (2nd level Priest spell), decide if the trap's effects are something you can recover from, then just open the chest.
* The Priest and Bishop healing comes from spells. This means that, if you change a character's class, that character will still be able to cast healing spells (if the character could before). Also, Lords get some healing spells as well.

Well, I think the part where its game over when the leader dies is no more. My leader got slain, but I was still able to play, and eventually I got to return to town. My party got disbanded and I think my leader was left with 1 hit point. I had no problem collecting my teammates. Just a quick trip the the guild.

Well, not perfectly. Somehow my mage was evil and did not want to return to a team that had good characters. Is it possible for characters to change alignments? I think something happened, but I was pressing confirm quickly to get through the battles quickly.

The leader dying isn't game over; the leader becoming "Lost", however, is.

In other words, if you had tried to revive the character with a priest spell twice and failed, you would have gotten a game over. Needless to say, this is a rare occurrence, and something that you might never experience. In fact, it sounds like you would need to have a level 17+ Priest or Bishop (possibly a Lord, but I'm not sure if they learn that particular spell) to attempt the second resurrection, so it might not even be possible early in the game.

Now, as for alignment changes:
Sometimes, you will encounter a group of enemies that are just watching you; it is in these encounters where your alignment can change. If you choose to Fight, each character might move one step toward Evil (and the actual fight will start, possibly with you ambushing the enemies); if you choose to Leave, each character has a chance of moving toward Good (and you likely won't have to fight, though some enemies will choose to fight anyway, and might ambush you). If you choose Watch, there will be no alignment changes, and there's a good chance the fight will start unless you are in an encounter with good enemies ("You sense no malice from them", or something along those lines).

To get around your issue:
* Start a new leader character, who should be either Neutral or Evil.
* Go into the dungeon with the new leader and your Evil Mage.
* Return to the Title Screen while in the dungeon (preferably near the entrance).
* Load your old leader.
* Find the spot where the other party was left.
* Use the "Search for Members" option, and you should be able to add that Evil Mage back into your party.

Well, I played some more recently. I spent a few hours trying to get the event that gives your characters a chance to become more good. I got bored and frustrated, so I stopped.

I decided to replace that character. I made a bishop character. The bishop quickly proved useful as I had collected a lot of junk earlier when I was trying to make my mage good. In fact, the gear I got was much better than the stuff I was able to buy. Earlier I had bought my front line fighter characters some short swords and bucklers, but some of the gear I was getting through appraise was leather armor and longswords. I even got some slings.

I decided to try changing the class of a few of my characters. I had the impression that I could learn and keep spells after changing classes. I also thought that I didn't have enough healing magic, so I respec some to become priests. I tried changing a character back after a few levels, but it seems that they forget a spell or two. I'm not sure what the rules are for remembering spells during class change.

I'm a bit puzzled as to how stats and hp are gained. Some characters have been getting lots of stats, but other have been slow. One of my respec priests started with 40 hp and has been getting roughly 20 hp per level, but my bishop started with 8 hp, and has been struggling with having 24 hp at level 6. It seems that my samurai remains a few levels behind my other characters. Do some characters need more xp? Also, some of my character stats show up in white, grey, even red. Is this important?

Trying to equip my characters has proven challenging. It seems that priests can't use fighter weapons, even if they formerly fighters. Also, moving gear between characters has been a chore.

If you want to change the alignments of your characters, the best place to do that is Shiin B4F. (Note that this is one of those floors that has a big difficulty jump.) Crusaders are fairly common on that floor, and they are never hostile, and won't ever attack you unless you explicitly choose to fight them, making it relatively easy tp make your characters good. (Making your characters evil is a bit risky.)

I have not noticed any forgetting of spells; you do lose some of your spell points when you change class (half of them, to be exact), but you shouldn't lose any of your spells. With that said, other class abilities are not kept; you lose your skills, and (as you observed) your equipment options change with your class. (By the way, Lords actually learn Priest spells really quickly, so if you can change someone into one, you can get the mid-level healing spells early (like level 6 and 7 minimum, possibly delayed by maybe 2 levels if you're unlucky). The catch is that they learn only half the Priest spells, and don't learn either of the full heal spells.)

Stat gains are affected by a hidden stat called "energy", which notably decreases when a character dies (or when a character is resurrected). (According to some sources, it will increase at level up.) There are a couple items that change energy when their special ability is used (though I haven't found either), as well as a couple traps that change energy, though in both those cases the game will explicitly tell you about the energy change. (Yes, there is actually a trap that *increases* energy.)

HP gains are affected by vitality, and the character's race (which affects vitality) has a huge impact. By any chance, is your Bishop a Gnome? That would explain their poor HP. (Elves might be a better choice, with higher HP and agility at the expense of a little spell power.)

Yes, some classes level slower than others. Fighters level up the fastest (not Thieves, oddly enough), while Ninjas level up the slowest. In fact, the only reasons to use a Mage over a Bishop are faster leveling and Magic Boost (which probably isn't as useful as Magic Wall since it takes an extra turn to use).

If a stat is in grey, you have something equipped that is providing a bonus to a stat. If it's in red, you have something equipped that lowers the stat. The displayed stat includes the modifiers from equipment. If you look at the details of equipment, you can see which stats are changed; blue means the stat increases, red means it decreases, and purple (seen only if you're at the shop or inn and not in your inventory) means that the effect is randomly determined once the item enters your inventory; selling and buying back will reroll purple stats.

Also, don't forget that you can convert your gold to experience by tithing at the temple; this can be a good way to bring a new or class-changed character up to speed, or to get important spells like Free Warp and NAL Burst earlier.

How strange. I just made some 1st level characters and class changed them several times. It seems that one knows a spell that the other doesn't. One also has more spell slots than the other. Changing the class a few more times seems to have fixed this. Gaining levels also fixes this.

On a related note. Do you lose hp if you change classes? Both of my new characters have 1 hp each (after changing classes many times). Increase energy? Hmm... It sounds like I could cheese the system really bad. Actually, the bishop is an elf. The high hp priest is a dwarf. My gnome priest has much more hit points than the bishop elf.

Does class affect what stats are improved? I would be tempted to convert some of them to fighters if that would improve vitality and hp. I haven't. I've used it a few times already.


I can't seem to buy the 2nd map for the dungeon of trials. I can buy the 1st map, which allows me to see a map of floors 1 or 2, but nothing when on floor 3. A teleport trap caused me some trouble when trying to leave. Is there anything I can do to get the maps I need?

Yes, you lose about half your HP each time. Maps past the first one have to be obtained as drops from random enemies.

In the mean time, you can cast Arcane Map (2nd level spell) to temporarily gain access to the auto-map. (Note that, unlike many Japanese Wizardry games, the spell has a duration and lets you freely access the map until it runs out; this is in contrast to games where casting the spell would bring up the map only once.)

I have exploird Trials B6F and Shiin B8F and still haven't found the maps for Trials past B2F. Also, I found the Shiin 10 map twice before I found the Shiin 7-9 map.

I have a few ideas of how to exploit this then. Am I right to assume that the beefier classes like the fighter gives you more hit points than classes like the priest or mage? I forgot about that spell. I need to read the spells again. The only spells I've been paying attention to are the healing spells and cure poison (can be quite deadly). I tend to not use combat spells in my battles. They run out too quickly.

I'm thinking I must be missing something with regard to mapping. I have two of the maps, one of which is for first two dungeon of trials levels. However, I can't figure out how to access them. (It must be easy, since I can't find the question asked anywhere else.) The use item command does nothing, and they can't be equipped. What am I missing?

( have a similar problem with arcane map. My mage casts the spell with no trouble, but I see no map display. I think I found a keyboard shortcuts list somewhere, though I now can't find it. It included M to invoke map, but that does nothing with the physical maps or with arcane maps.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

But offensive spells get the battles over with faster, allowing you to get more battles in a given amount of time, and they may save more times than it takes to recover your spell. (Keep in mind that you also need to restore your healing spells.)

Incidentally, the level of a spell is not always an accurate reflection of its power. In particular, Flame Arrow and Flame Field are quite good for their level, while the third level spells are rather weak, and the 4th level ice spell is still slightly weaker than Flame Field. (You start getting stronger spells at the 5th spell level.) Also, in terms of power, Drain Life = Steal Life.

Actually, the default key for accessing the map is 'A'. (The controls are actually quite similar to how you would play an emulated console game with the keyboard.)

Thanks! I knew there had to be something I was missing!