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Decided to play this game again for the first time since it was released. Is there an easy way to get it to support widescreen? I found something called the Wizardry 8 Extender which supposedly allows it but Windows Defender freaked out and told me it had a trojan in it.
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Jul 23, 2020 23:50
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No, unfortunately, Wiz8's implementation of widescreen is either stretching the screen or using black boxes on the side. It's terrible.
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Jul 23, 2020 23:58
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Yeah I absolutely despise texture stretching and that's what it was doing, but I played around and got it to do black bars on the sides which I can live with.
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Jul 24, 2020 20:04
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You know, I've forgotten how absolutely brutal this game can be. After bumbling around in the monastery for far too long, I exited and on my road to even reach the crossroads before Arnika, I encountered 15 crabs, 16 army ants and 4 bandits that were giant sacks of hitpoints but astonishingly harmless after a rain of constant status effects. After reaching level 7 just from beating up all the enemies, I've had just reached the road when a swarm of plants showed up. A dozen, of course. After a grueling battle of status effects I had them down to 2, which then proceeded to murder my party. I count this as an ironic death, because just minutes before encountering those poisonous motherfuckers, I had the chance to take Cure Poison, but instead took another damage spell for my alchemist. "I have tons of potions" I said to myself, "I can take that spell later", I said. Minutes later I run into fuckers who poison everyone constantly. The worst thing? The battle took forever, because those fuckers had 90+ hp each They also loved to put my entire party to sleep, gently caress. This game, sometimes  Edit: I forgot to mention, before even leaving the monastery, the game was nice enough to send a swarm of 16+ rats against my party, 5 of them of a type beefy enough to basically solo my party. The first time I just kinda stumbled into them, then they taught me that no, even with our backs to a wall, we couldn't "just take them". On the way to ascension to godhood: Eaten by rats. Doorways are your friend. Libluini fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jul 24, 2020 |
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Jul 24, 2020 20:38
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Yeah, Arnika Road sucks. Wide open (there are corners you can and should wedge yourself into, but that doesn't help when a dozen wasps pop up over the hill right on top of you), absolutely full to the brim of large enemy packs, and have way more HP than pretty much anything in the monastery aside from Gregor. And, unless you've gotten really lucky, you haven't picked up any significant weapon upgrades to match that HP growth, so every fight takes forever and is a huge expenditure of resources.
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Jul 24, 2020 20:47
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When my feline samarai could actually cast fireball type spells to help my mage help clear things out is about when random encounters in open areas stopped being frustrating/nightmare-ish. Unfortunately, that was a long time into the game. Sadly I got completely flumuxed on how to proceed at some point and stopped playing.
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Jul 24, 2020 21:51
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For the upcoming update I had a fight that I had to restart something like 20 times to win, because it was entirely decided in the first two rounds and I kept rolling terribly.  Probably my own fault for taking the fight and not just sneaking around it, but goddammit, those monsters were worth XP.
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Jul 24, 2020 22:50
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PurpleXVI posted:For the upcoming update I had a fight that I had to restart something like 20 times to win wizardry.txt, from the very first game all the way through to the very last.
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Jul 24, 2020 23:26
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Oh yeah, Wizardry 8 can just be so mean sometimes. I just made it to Arnika by essentially just running. Plant monsters I couldn't beat, a troop of those spike-hands monsters I couldn't beat, it was basically just one, long run towards the city. My party barely made it before its stamina ran out. Dying two times against super plants was already two times too much, imho I eagerly await the day the OP makes it to Arnika. Though of course it's interesting to see parts of the game I never made it to before. (I always went monastery -> arnika -> trynton before giving up, everything PurpleXVI did after leaving the monastery is completely new to me.)
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Jul 25, 2020 00:09
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Libluini posted:You know, I've forgotten how absolutely brutal this game can be. After bumbling around in the monastery for far too long, I exited and on my road to even reach the crossroads before Arnika, I encountered 15 crabs, 16 army ants and 4 bandits that were giant sacks of hitpoints but astonishingly harmless after a rain of constant status effects. Back in the day I remember a lot of online strategy guides recommended deliberately avoiding going past level 4 or 5 until you got within a stone's throw of Arnika, because encounters scale by level and at this stage of the game they scale up faster than you do. (Once you loot Arnika you get a huge leg up, so at that point you can just resume leveling normally and not worry about it anymore. But your starting equipment just does not cut it against the enemies that you see at level 7 or 8.)
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Jul 25, 2020 02:09
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Straight White Shark posted:But your starting equipment just does not cut it against the enemies that you see at level 7 or 8.) This is part of the mage vs physical divide. Ultimately physical combatants scale to being able to do more brutal damage by the end, especially as monster resistances pile on, but Wizardry has what feels like a shortage of midgame equipment for physical-focused characters(in some cases it feels like you go from a starter weapon to the weapon a character has for the literal rest of the game), while mages level up their arsenal just by going up levels. Physical characters also level up in more abrupt jags as they get more attacks, while mage characters have a smoother rise in power from level to level. Any mage with an out-of-combat spell can also level that school of magic without risk, increasing their power considerably without actually increasing their level, while physical combatants can't really increase their skills without fighting and thus leveling, and thus also increasing the danger level of enemies.
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Jul 25, 2020 07:41
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I have such fond memories of Wizardry 8. I struggled through the demo back in the day, which was super rough between the difficulty (Gregor!) and the fact that my computer's on board graphics weren't beefy enough to be running the thing. I ended up having to buy my first graphics card when I got the full version, but it was so so worth it. And like everyone else, my first party got murdered again and again on the road to Arnika before I learned to hug the walls and run for my life.
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Jul 25, 2020 15:23
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PurpleXVI posted:This is part of the mage vs physical divide. Ultimately physical combatants scale to being able to do more brutal damage by the end, especially as monster resistances pile on, but Wizardry has what feels like a shortage of midgame equipment for physical-focused characters(in some cases it feels like you go from a starter weapon to the weapon a character has for the literal rest of the game), while mages level up their arsenal just by going up levels. Physical characters also level up in more abrupt jags as they get more attacks, while mage characters have a smoother rise in power from level to level. Most games in the series suffer a bit from spellcaster grinding. 8's skill-based system can lead to power-leveling caster skill in a way where you don't even need to be fighting monsters, if you're willing to spend a mind-numbingly boring period of time doing that, which leaves physical-based characters even further behind the curve. And balancing in certain areas is very "friendly mob" dependent: a fight that will kill you dead if three monster groups spawn can be easy if it's two monster groups and a group of patrolling friendly guards. At least running away is a viable option in 8.
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Jul 25, 2020 17:56
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So thanks to this thread, I found out that there's a small but surprisingly in-depth selection of mods for Wizardry 8, including options everywhere from "minor tweaks and balance changes" (Christian Coder's mod or Flamestryke's mod) all the way up to "gently caress everything you thought you knew about Wiz8, this is an entirely different game" (Lunastralis or Wizardry Reforged). I'm playing White Wolf's mod now, which is sort of in the middle of those two extremes. It leaves the game's original plot structure more or less alone until the very end, but has a ton of new items, tweaks classes and spells, introduces some new RPCs (including two in the monastery, one of which is a Priest right on the beach so you never have to worry about early game healing), a bunch of new side quests, and then several huge late game/post game areas. There have also been little tweaks to most of the zones; there's an extra shop in Arnika with some new custom items, etc. I'm having a ton of fun with it. It's new enough to be interesting without making me throw out everything I've learned across a dozen playthroughs of the original game.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:02
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It's actually remarkable how moddable Wizardry 8 is with the Cosmic Forge utility, though it's become slightly challenging to find. I think the only things it doesn't let you alter might be how many zones there are and what music plays where. It literally lets you gently caress with everything else, though, including level geometry and skins.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:36
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You can add zones with Cosmic Forge, but there's a hard cap that they haven't been able to work around yet. I think it's 56 or something, which is way more than the original game actually uses. Lunastralis and Wizardry Reforged (both by the same person) have a ton of entirely-new zones, including space-based and lunar zones. White Wolf re-uses zone geometry for its zones, which honestly is probably a good thing because monsters have an unfortunate tendency to walk through walls in Wizardry Reforged; apparently it's tricky to set the walk meshes to properly match the terrain with Cosmic Forge.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:57
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Zurai posted:So thanks to this thread, I found out that there's a small but surprisingly in-depth selection of mods for Wizardry 8, including options everywhere from "minor tweaks and balance changes" (Christian Coder's mod or Flamestryke's mod) all the way up to "gently caress everything you thought you knew about Wiz8, this is an entirely different game" (Lunastralis or Wizardry Reforged). Does that healing priest tempt you to walk back to him for embarrassingly long distances instead of resting? Like the healing fountain in the tutorial dungeon in wiz7?
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Jul 28, 2020 22:28
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Zurai posted:So thanks to this thread, I found out that there's a small but surprisingly in-depth selection of mods for Wizardry 8, including options everywhere from "minor tweaks and balance changes" (Christian Coder's mod or Flamestryke's mod) all the way up to "gently caress everything you thought you knew about Wiz8, this is an entirely different game" (Lunastralis or Wizardry Reforged). Huh. Against all expectations I found a copy of the lovely mod I made 15+ years ago floating around, I would have figured it would have disappeared into the ether by now. It's definitely on the former end of that spectrum, it's got a few new spells but mostly it's just a million terrible pun items.
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Jul 28, 2020 22:57
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VictualSquid posted:Does that healing priest tempt you to walk back to him for embarrassingly long distances instead of resting? Like the healing fountain in the tutorial dungeon in wiz7? He's not a healing fountain, he's a recruitable character (like Saxx and Sparkle in the update above). He comes pre-loaded with Heal Wounds and a couple other useful low-level spells and has a few levels on a level 1 party, so he's a nice crutch for a party that's all hybrids or otherwise healer-less. Straight White Shark posted:Huh. Against all expectations I found a copy of the lovely mod I made 15+ years ago floating around, I would have figured it would have disappeared into the ether by now. It's definitely on the former end of that spectrum, it's got a few new spells but mostly it's just a million terrible pun items. I'm a sucker for terrible pun items. I might load that up in Cosmic Forge just to giggle at them.
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Jul 29, 2020 02:14
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The only two that I remember are Sirius (an endgame shuriken only usable by rawulfs) and the Killeidoscope (an upgraded version of one of the gadgets.) There were plenty more for sure, though.
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Jul 29, 2020 02:17
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Straight White Shark posted:Killeidoscope You are the wind beneath my wings. Sirius isn't bad, but that right there is a treasure.
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Jul 29, 2020 02:41
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Straight White Shark posted:The only two that I remember are Sirius (an endgame shuriken only usable by rawulfs) and the Killeidoscope (an upgraded version of one of the gadgets.) There were plenty more for sure, though. Sirius the dog throwing star is amazing.
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Jul 29, 2020 04:16
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Petition for OP to use that mod for the LP, those are some excellently awful puns 
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Jul 29, 2020 08:33
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Nemo2342 posted:Sirius the dog throwing star is amazing. Oh gently caress me I completely missed that one on first read. You genius. Also new post should be incoming later today or tomorrow.
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Jul 29, 2020 09:10
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Part 004: Arnika The votes seemed more or less in agreement that for now both Saxx and Sparkle should be recruited and the party should join the Umpani as step one towards joining both warring races and attempting to reconcile them. This post will be relatively video heavy since there are a ton of new dialogue NPC's, both some who'll actually talk to us now and others that we'll be meeting for the first time.  So we're headed back to the Umpani base camp after my brief hunting expedition the Northern Wilderness to grab up Sparkle and tell Balbrak we want to join.    Getting Sparkle on the team is pretty effortless, she's a useful enough girl and not actually notably behind the party in XP.    Sparkle has gear that's comparable to our current loadout, and much like Aurora she's got an axe for her melee weapon. There are a couple of Ranger-only axes in the game, but they are, as has been mentioned, kind of a sub-par choice considering the limited selection of good axes compared to, say, good swords and polearms. The blunt weapons suffer much the same fate. Stats-wise it looks rather like she's been generated in much the same way as a player character, which is nice, because some games generate their NPC recruitables much differently which lead to a lot of them being unbalanced towards either uselessness or being OP. Sparkle's main issue is that she doubles up on a class we already have, when what we really want more than anything is greater class variety so we can use more spell types and equipment types. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRS8whDd2Y4 Once we tell Balbrak we want to join up he gives us a level 1 access card(which we don't really use) and we get to quiz him about a lot of stuff.  Having joined up, we can also recruit Saxx(and talk to Saxx), talk to Bildublu(the bartender) and actually shop at the commissary! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC7LHmDx7VM  Saxx is an excellent recruit, since he opens up some spells we can't cast yet. Specifically, his starting instrument, the Soulful Sax, which can be acquired no other way, casts Soul Shield, which ups resistances against a lot of awful "gently caress you and your entire party"-conditions like Insanity, Turncoat and instant death. He also has some bagpipes that do cone damage and a horn that casts Bless. He can actually cast it at a higher level than Lady, but I want Lady to get in the Divine training and he's better off starting most fights with Soul Shield.  The game defaults new recruits to the frontal quadrant, but to keep the wide front, I shove Saxx and Sparkle on the right flank while Aurora gets to hang out with Lady on the left flank.  Kunar should appreciate our business more.   Most shops will have a couple of equipment upgrades from this point on, in Kunar's case it's mostly a heavy crossbow for Aurora since it'll be a punchier option than her shortbow until I can glue a bunch of Light Crossbows together(as drops and shop lists are somewhat level-scaled, some kinds of low-level drops can actually be frustratingly hard to get if you don't find them early enough). However, if we had the money it would also be a good choice to buy some resurrection powder from him and some magic nectars. Magic nectars are about the only way to recover magic points for mages without resting or rare fountains, and so are very important consumables to find. Speaking of, not having a Bishop or Priest for the first time ever, I'm getting a lot more use out of consumables than I normally do, as potions become ever more vital for stamina/health regen. Offensive spell items remain a bit pointless, though as always I'll hoard Canned Elementals(more about elementals later this post...), while selling most other things(the stat reqs. needed not to backfire these items tend to be a bit fucky since some require Artifacts, which only levels very slowly and passively and others require sling/throwing which also levels slowly since it very much tends to be a backup skill for the characters that do use it.  Shops also tend to carry spellbooks which is where you should be getting your low-level spells and especially Bishops live or die more or less purely on what spellbooks you can pick up for them, since they will NEVER get a decent loadout from simply level-up learned spells.  Sadly I will never have the gold to buy everything I want from these stores, so we're off to basic training.   I forget to talk to Rubble, so we don't get his full selection of dialogue yet, as he's moved on by the time we get out of the training course.    I wish I knew why someof these screenshots are unusually grainy. Just trust me when I say that blue stuff is water. We jump a few ramps, leap into the water and...   Yeah so these go up and down and if you get hit by them(though they're not exactly hard to dodge) you get instakilled by physics damage. Physics damage is, as previously mentioned, extremely unforgiving in this game and sometimes using objects from the wrong angle will just annihilate you as the game clips the party into a five-cubic-inch space.   Oh and then some MAGMA. How many Umpani recruits met their end on this little training course?  You can't actually jump in Wizardry 8, so you need to run on to this platform at the right time, and because of the way the game's physics work, getting off while it's over the fence at the end is surprisingly difficult. You move with moving objects you stand on, so as you move forwards and the platform backwards, you remain at the same position in space until you reach the edge of the platform and fall off. So moving a bit too late gets you dragged back over the lava. Wizardry 8 also handles slopes real weird, plenty of stairs you need a run-up to be able to climb as you kind of bounce over the first step rather than simply stepping over it.   The Umpani approach to target dummies is interesting.   In that they're animated and will run over and attempt to ninja kick you in the face while you try to gun them down. Umpani training is hardcore. After chunking the "target dummies" you have to pick the lock on the door out. I'm not sure if its possible to softlock yourself here by having no one with any lockpicking skill at all in the party.   For our trouble we get a level 2 passkey, the only purpose of which is to open the door letting is out. It'll be more interesting when we get a level 3 passkey, but that won't be for a while yet, sadly. Since I always do this after Marten's Bluff in my own runs, I had forgotten that we couldn't get the level 3 key until visiting the T'rang base.   Balbrak demands we go collect some trophies before he'll promote us any further. Now, the vote seemed to mostly be that if I couldn't progress any further at Mt. Gigas, I should do Arnika next, but I decided to poke my head into the Mountain Wilderness anyway, just to see if I could make any headway there and continue advancing in an unorthodox way.  The trip over to the bridge is mostly uneventful except for encountering another Hogar.   Did I mention party members have different commentary lines depending on whether the person killed is a PC or an RPC? I win out over the Hogar in the end, it's just a big numberslam fight, really, and collect some things from the cave which include an un-ID'd set of bagpipes. Later investigation reveals that they cast the spell Hex on an entire group of enemies. It's a divine-type condition that's rarely seen but just functions as a big ol' penalty to everything. Now for this bastard blocking the way into the Mountain Wilderness.  He's several levels above the Hogar that almost prevented us from reaching the foothills of Mt. Gigas, though only half the health. Thankfully he has a secret weakness I'm going to be exploiting because I'm a big brain genius.   To emphasize what a big boy he is, the screen literally shakes and jiggles with every step he takes. Now, the secret to beating this guy? Missile Shield. Roughly every second attack, or possibly even two-thirds of his attacks, are thrown boulders rather than punches, and Missile Shield doesn't give a gently caress how big your thrown object is, it has pretty good odds of just bopping it out of the way and no-selling it. On top of that, Stony manages to blind him with his Omnigun which gives us a couple of rounds of bonus damage and the golem running away, giving the crew a rest. He goes down without killing anyone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCkMnEWzQ_c A rare few enemy types also have non-chunky death animations. Golems, for instance, sort of crack and fall apart.    Welcome to the Mountain Wilderness. We're really not supposed to be here yet.   I really wish there was a fan patch or mod of some sort to fix the atrocious draw distance, it always feels like the part of the game that has, technically, aged the worst, and it somewhat spoils the more open areas if you can get up anywhere a bit tall.   The path splits into one leading down the slopes and one leading up. Upwards we can see some interesting architecture and also something with big wings.   Thankfully Bela, players of Wizardry 6 may recognize him, is a friendly NPC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPs3F2dO_Oo Somewhat vague, but he drops a decent bit of lore on us. It costs us nothing to, for now, promise to spare the Savant so Bela can get close to him, so we may as well. Bela is also a high-level merchant, selling tons of spellbooks and some unique gear items. Once we're rolling in the dough it wouldn't be a bad idea to come back and pay him a visit. Now, about that big arch behind him...  ...it's actually where the endgame area is. Sparkles is sadly one of the NPC's that will refuse to go up there, so I have to run back and forth for several real-time minutes to make her pass out so I can haul the entire party through.  Of course I can't really do anything much here yet, but there's a thing or two I was hoping to see if I could get far enough up the peak to trigger them.    All NPC's have some dialogue when they enter a new major area they're not afraid of. Some of it's interesting! Saxx is, I'll note, one of the four RPC's who will go with us to Ascension Peak without crying about it.    I make it around a couple of bends in the barren mountain pass before spotting all these large, angry things in the distance and deciding to haul rear end back to the Mountain Wilderness before I get pasted.    Peeking down the other path, I confirm that if I tried to head down into the valley I'd be dealing with a half dozen or more level 12 ants on fire. Fire ants can usually, well, spit fire, and predictably they're also immune to fire, which would mean that my biggest damage-dealing spell, Fireball, would be out of the running right away. I decide to back off and head to Arnika instead, rather than bouncing my head off this encounter twenty or more times.   So the first thing I see, coming back over the bridge to this wilderness, is three scrub thugs and the two sorceresses leading them. I think to myself, "oh, this should be easy. the sorcs will just like, cast Terror or maybe Frost a couple of times, while I mulch the thugs and then beat up the nerd wizards. This fight will be over in a couple of minutes!"  Sparkle's real gung-ho for this fight, just like me.  Wait, gently caress.  Oh God ow. The fighty types tank the fireball well enough, but two fireballs or one fireball and some misc. damage, would wipe out Werdna easy, and I need his spells to win this fight.  What's even worse is that they can apparently Summon Elementals and if they start flooding the battlefield with those I am VERY hosed.   Next turn, the summoning succeeds and... whoof. Elementals are big, fast and hit like trucks. We're talking like 40 damage per punch. Their one weakness is that if their summoner, who's usually a lot weaker than them, goes down, so does the elemental. But the highwaymen get in the way of my shooting and Werdna's cone spells can't hit them and it would take something in the region of five or six Fireballs to blow the Sorceresses up, which would take an unacceptably long time.    I think that's a reloadin'. Time to think TACTICAL. Time to think STRATEGY.  I back down the bridge a bit so the pack stops focusing on me and start heading down the road, first off.  Just after heading away from the bridge there's a U turn with a small ridge in between. The plan now is to wait for them to round that turn, lurk on the other side, hit COMBAT MODE, and RUN over the ridge so I can instantly get into combat with the sorceresses. The theory is solid.  The execution less so. Most of the party bar Werdna gets to go before the Sorceresses, so it's entirely down to what they cast and how effective it is, because the only way I can win the fight is if Werdna pegs them with a Web or a Freeze Flesh before they take him down. In about 20 or so tries they... Double up on fireballs turn one, blowing up Werdna. Beat me to casting paralyzes or sleep which puts enough of the party to bed that I lose on turn two. Once bust out Whipping Rocks which does a completely unreasonable amount of very painful damage(imagine a shotgun blast of gravel to the face). Several times they also summon an elemental on turn one and I get pasted before I can take down the summoner. The Highwaymen decide to use the rarely-seen Protect command to defend the Summoners(means they take the hit for the summoners, doesn't work for spells, though), delaying me enough in taking them out that they recover from conditions and kick my rear end. But eventually I get lucky rolls and pin down the casters and mulch them in the early stages of the fight.  As you can see by the party's HP totals, however, it was anything but an easy ride even so. There are a few more encounters on the way back to the road, mostly small groups of highwaymen and vines, but ultimately nothing that presents a real challenge.   We emerge right next to Arnika's gates, helpfully enough, and it's just a quick left turn and we're inside.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGUUqrtVinc The soundtrack helps make you feel like you've just arrived somewhere you can take a peaceful breather after getting attacked by everything that moves on the road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZElksoU7A4 Myles here is recruitable. The only time I've ever recruited him has been as a meatshield on the runs where Arnika was my first destination, and he got dropped like a bag of trash the instant I had a replacement. Being a pure-classed rogue, we have no real use for him as we already have both Stony and Twinkles with lockpicking skills, and like so many others he can't really enter the later stages of the game with us, so spending time levelling him up is kind of wasted.    For once the poor draw distance works in the game's favour as Arnika feels a lot larger than it is, and I actually find myself getting slightly lost in it on occasion when looking for a specific building. Sadly it's somewhat small and is clearly one of the areas that suffered from crunch time, with several areas feeling like they had more intended for them.    The local police station. We can get in here easily enough in short order, but it contains nothing of real interest except for a bit of flavour text which, I suppose, is fine enough on its own, but it's still a relatively large building for how little flavour text it contains.    Arnika's soundtrack is a bit deceitful, because while it's not AS hostile as the road, it's certainly not entirely peaceful. Periodically patrols of savant androids will spawn and march the streets, getting into fights with the cops(the Higardi Lunar Legion, which is probably why that mod added a moon bit.) and you. Thankfully these early types aren't so bad.   I duck into a bar rather than fight them for now, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEwFI-pHe5k He'li is probably one of the chattiest NPC's in Arnika, and we WILL need to talk to her again later. Because as the "rumour" NPC she is, once we join both the T'rang and the Umpani, she hears about it... and she'll happily sell us out if we don't pay her off. Of course, if we DO pay her off(and we will), she keeps her word and doesn't snitch on us.  Once I'm done talking to her, it's time to loot her back rooms, which consist of two small rooms and the upstairs.   The important part here is really to get this keycard out of what is, presumably, Anna's room. There isn't really anything else in the rooms of notable interest unless you came here first, then there might be a small gear upgrade or two.  We can also see the androids still waiting outside for us. Enemies can't open doors, ever, so as long as we've got a closed door behind us, they'll never path to us. Still, more and more androids keep showing up, so I suppose we should go outside and deal with them.   As the first round closes up we come to the true horror of fighting in Arnika... there are two types of allied patrollers, Lay Brothers and Higardi Patrols, and their needing to take their turns makes every fight take twice as long as it should. Thankfully they are, at least, usually competent backup that scores some kills for us and shortens the fight that way. Anyway. ANDROIDS.  Due to being robots they have a grab-bag of immunities, and they come in four variants. These are the basic punch troopers, then there's a version with a gun for a hand, the Savant Orbs which fly around and shoot KO/Insanity projectiles at you("Neurobolts") and the big burly androids we saw in the Monastery, the one that mocked us after Aletheides gave us some exposition, which are strong in melee but can also use their scythes to shoot at you. Later-game droid armies that mix all four types can be surprisingly threatening as they can engage you at all ranges and some lucky Neurobolt hits can severely limit your ability to fight back. And if you're heavily reliant on Psionic spells, they resist some of the best effects from that school of magic. For now, though, we're good.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abCUMc-nB4E  Cleaning them up gives Stony a level-up and his Omnigun now has twice the chance to blind enemies. This is very exciting since the random blind effects from that has turned around a couple of close fights before, and trivialized minorly threatening ones.   Investigating the name plate on this statue of Phoonzang causes it to drop off, revealing a hidden compartment behind containing a few potions and dusts that could be handy for a starting party.   I'm sure there are no shenanigans we could possibly come up with in a bank and that I will not have looted the main vault before this update is over.     Lorrac has clearly worked customer service for too long. She doesn't have anything to really say to anything we ask her, she mostly serves two purposes. Firstly, if we hit the buttons behind her to open the vaults or sound the alarm, she summons the guards to kick our rear end. Doing this would be stupid. Secondly, if we give her clear evidence that we're a customer here to access our safety deposit box...   Clearly we wouldn't be carrying around He'li's access card if we weren't He'li. This bank just defines security and trustworthiness.  I poke around a bit while heading down the hall to the elevator. The bank primarily just consists of the two vault elevators and these waiting rooms which are probably the nicest-looking(in terms of luxury) rooms in Arnika. Also the floors are very reflective. Considering the age of the game, that's a bit of a surprise, since I remember other games not too far removed from it in age that could hardly handle anything reflective. Then again, Wizardry 8 also cheats by not reflecting anything that actually moves or changes, like player characters or NPC's.     So the basement of the bank, on the deposit vault side, has two sections. The first one contains the personal vaults of He'li, Anna L'am and Antone Rapax, while the next section has three general storage vaults. The first three require keycards, while the latter three just requires that Stony break open the locks. This bank has no alarms down here, which is great for us, less great for the local economy when we finish looting the place. The loot down here would be great for a starting party, but as it is set and un-levelled, I have no use for it currently(though when I bust open Antone's vault, I'm hoping one of the items will remains useful). Still, it's the principle that if there's a bank, you drat well rob it, and also I can sell the items to buy things I actually do care about. The vault does yield a lot of un-ID'd blue potions that I hope will turn out to be Magic Nectars and Potions of Heavy Healing, though.   The only nasty surprise for a starting party is that the third general storage vault contains a guardian golem. Considering that he's more or less just a half-size and half-stat version of the Marble Golem I pasted on the bridge to the Mountain Wilderness, however, he doesn't represent much of a threat.   On leaving the bank I encounter a pair of the big henchmen with the scythe-staves. They go down in seconds from a combination of the party and a pack of lay brothers walking up behind them and punching them repeatedly in the back of the head.   As thanks for their helping out, I decide to go visit their bossman, Lord Braffit.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8xeZmlolj4  For most players, Braffit is probably their first chance to buy spellbooks. He tends to offer a good selection of Divine-related ones, and like all stores, every in-game three days or so, his stock replenishes with some randomly rolled new items.  We can also give him this note from the monastery.  Which makes him forget who we are and tell us to go graverobbing to find the key to that weird door back in the Monastery. You bet your rear end I'll be heading back that way as soon as I've got the key and am done with Arnika. Those things are pretty useful this early in the game.   So poke your head around the side of the temple and you find a way down into the basement.  The door immediately ahead leads to the crypt.  Going around the side breaks you into the Lay Brothers' quarters, however, where you can find a pair of real important amulets.   I have no idea why these are female-character only, but it's a good reason to make your melee combatants female, which ours luckily are! Chewbecka and Lady each get one of these, which will help a lot to make sure they don't get tuckered out during longer fights. There's also a Ring of Protection which applies a +1 AC across all body parts. I'm not sure exactly how the game handles body part targeting, but +1 is good, so take it and slap it on someone vulnerable. In my case it goes on Aurora.    These ghosts can be troublesome if you come here early. They've got the same immunities as androids, basically, making them imposible to turn insane or put to sleep, and in addition to punching you, most ghosts have "touch" attacks that can make your guys go insane, fall asleep, etc. a bunch of annoying paralyzing effects.  They also tend to have access to causing those conditions through party-wide spells. Coming here after you know Fireball or Holy Water, however, tends to trivialize this fight. The ghosts go down without doing much more than lightly bruising Sparkle.   Despite the size of the room, all it guards is this key. Now we just gotta take a walk back and make use of it.   Back outside I take a look at the map of Arnika which once again illustrates how the game's automap doesn't handle layered rooms well.   Antone is the local smith. Not shown: me breaking into his bedroom and stealing his bank keycard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhCLMFm_-_c Antone is part of the aforementioned "pseudo-crafting" mechanics where you can add special items to his shopping list by bringing him rare objects. The Featherweight Plate is the only one I'm particularly interested in since it's a very low-weight suit of plate and carrying too much makes your combatants slower. In addition to what they're equipped with and what's in their personal inventories, they also all carry an equal share of what's in the shared party inventory which they can't access during combat.  Outside Antone's Armory, we enter one of the residential parts of Arnika. Sadly, of all the abandoned houses, I think a grand total of two contain anything to steal. The rest are just there for flavour. It's hard to tell if this was intentional or again a result of lacking time to finish content. I feel like it's the latter.    So we head down to the docks! The ships are sunk, but there's another store here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQsm155mOGg Anna is one of the chattiest NPC's in town, mostly being able to talk about the other town NPC's.  She also sells Electrodes, which Gadgeteers need for some of their cooler, better, more awesome gadgets. She also occasionally has spellbooks, so worth hitting up if you're travelling back through Arnika for whatever reason. Oh and we steal her bank keycard, too, while we're there. Because why would we not?  On the quay we get ambushed by some bandits(for like five seconds as Werdna hits them all with a Web) and find this item, which is also a Gadgeteer part. We have 50% of a LOT of cool gadgets now.   This structure, between Antone's Armory and the crashed spaceship(it's the last place I'll be going this update), is our next destination.      It's the old jail, locked up while the Savant is invading.   Considering that the HLL chases a man halfway across the planet for stealing a divine artifact but never think to check his locker for evidence, or even have thought to empty his drat locker like 100 years later, does not speak greatly to their professionalism.   Oh and they didn't empty the cells before locking up and abandoning the jail. These guys will fight us to the death if we let them out.   The last two cells are empty, but only the last one is really so. The central one has a secret!    A hidden tunnel under some floorboards that collapse if you interact with them.  It's guarded by a trivial slime that nauseates everyone before Stony blinds it and it runs away while I pepper it full of arrows until it dies.    It's the main vault of the bank! It's a bit unimpressive for a main vault, but it does at least contain some magic gear. The other way in is to fight your way through the teller and security guards, and then pick a 10-lock door. Thankfully there's a teleporter in the corner for getting out, because I tried picking the door from the inside, and even having used a Knock Pick(casts Level 3 Knock Knock) to paralyze 3 of the tumblers, I think I spent something like 10 minutes trying to get Stony to pick the remaining 7 and he failed at the finish line every time. On the bright side it was enough tries to level up his lockpicking a bit!   Now, with Marten's ID badge in our pocket, let's go approach the local police station again.   You'd also think maybe they would have updated their systems to void Marten's credentials or something.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNn9GA8Bb9Y And that's basically all that there is to this building. Again, I feel like more was originally planned, but at least Tramain is nice enough.  Back outside, it's time to check out the spaceport.   We can't really do much of relevance here yet except blowing up some android squatters, picking up the X-Ray chip for a future Gadgeteer item and talking to a spaceship.     The Callisto has exactly zero relevance to anything that happens in the game, sadly. It feels like it could have been used to travel to some other locations, the moon, maybe boarding the Savant's ship(or those of the T'rang and Umpani) or just as a Mook-aligned fast travel system.   The spaceport itself consists of three rooms.   A big main room that could be seen as a departure lounge. Needs some furniture or really ANYTHING.   A black box reader. We will eventually need to get a black box read here to complete the T'rang/Umpani alliance quest.   The tracking tower which monitors space traffic around Dominus, but someone's yanked part of the system and we need to bring that part back as soon as we find "Bobo" somewhere in the gameworld.  Back in town, I decide to check out this slightly more futuristic-looking building next to the crashed ship. Let's find out what's up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYI8uMCirOE If you have any Mook party members, they pop inside to visit the Mook embassy. I don't know what happens if you have multiple Mook party members. Or indeed an entire Mook party. They return to the party after you camp for a bit, so I pop into a nearby abandoned building and get everyone a nap.  Clearly some changes during dev. There is, in fact, not a spaceship inside the Mook embassy. She's thinking of the Chaos Moliri, which the Mook brought to Dominus and are keeping inside their embassy. This is progress, we've now tracked one part of the trio. Of course, we've yet to get our grubby little mitts on it. But where there's a greedy enough will, there's a way!   I raid the last couple of abandoned houses, getting yet another Gadgeteer part, before setting off to check out the Savant's tower here in Arnika.    There's a fixed encounter of low-level androids with an android orb loitering around the back. They need to get flattened so we can loot them.  Here's a close-up of one of the Orbs, by the way. It's shaped more like a nautilus shell and moves by "rolling" through the air rather than just floating.    I'm sure anyone with even the slightest bit of imagination can understand why we'd want to bring along something for repairing a Dark Savant android. yes, one of the potential RPC's is in fact an android, and he's one of the best ones.  Time to FINALLY investigate this crashed spaceship. I'm sure whoever's inside is doing just fine.   The interior has been completely cored out, though there's damaged black box that's "survived" the event. We sadly won't be able to get anything out of a black box in this state of disrepair.  Inside there's only one damaged door to kick down to investigate the smashed-up building further.   Five low-level savant troopers and a friendly NPC... Vi Domina. She's kind of plot-relevant, though she was more important in Wizardry 7 than 8. Anyway, let's bail her out.  Predictably this does not take long.  Before talking to Vi, I grab the box in the corner. Combined with the clown doll from the abandoned house, it lets me craft...  Now, let's see what Vi has to say... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJYDfm9k3LY  Quite a lot of chatter from her, but with that done, we've tapped out Arnika for content now(except for returning to the merchants every so often to buy their stuff). So it's time to get a couple of votes up! Companions Should we swap Vitalia or, ugh, Myles, out for either of our existing companions? And if so, which one(s)? Personally I'd swap Sparkle for Vi. She's a decently beefy Valkyrie. Destination Unfortunately with the Mountain Wilderness too tough for us at the moment, we really only have one destination we can go to at this point, and that's Trynton(though Trynton is also a quite large area with a lot of content), but after Trynton the game opens up somewhat again.
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Jul 30, 2020 14:01
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Swap Sparkles for Vi. Vi also wears significantly more clothing in this game than in 7, hard as that may be to believe.
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Jul 30, 2020 14:19
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Goddamnit, I just walked right by that hidden tunnel. Next time I'll walk through the area, I need to rectify this.  I'm slightly amused that my cleptomanic tendencies already turned that note useless, though -I never thought of showing it to Braffit, but found and stole the wheelkey anyway
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Jul 30, 2020 15:16
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Swap out Sparkles, having to listen to her for more than a few minutes is a fate I wouldn't wish on anybody.Libluini posted:Goddamnit, I just walked right by that hidden tunnel. Next time I'll walk through the area, I need to rectify this. I think he gives you like 500xp or something for it. There are a couple of very piddly quest bonuses you can get when you reach Arnika, although I forget what all triggers them. Also, show off Antone's loot dammit! It's one of the best weapons in the game.
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Jul 30, 2020 15:39
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Ah, Antone. Before they nerfed it into the ground, you used to be able to pick pocket some great gear from him with a little save scumming. Also, I hope you’re using Wizfast to speed up some of these multi-party combats!
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Jul 30, 2020 16:07
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Swap Sparkles for Vi As mentioned, Sparkles can be kind of grating, and also Vi is as close to "canon" as the RPCs get. Go use the wheel key and also check out some of the other side content setpieces. Also pick up a plain dagger, short staff, and longsword, for no particular reason. I forget which ones exactly are presently accessible and won't immediately ruin your party at this level, but there's a ton of cool poo poo in Wizardry 8 if you go off the beaten path a little, and the earlier you do it, the longer you'll be able to enjoy the rewards. Some secrets in this game are pretty complicated, the stuff schoolyard rumors are made of, and I just love poo poo like that.
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Jul 30, 2020 18:11
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EclecticTastes posted:Also pick up a plain dagger, short staff, and longsword, for no particular reason. Only one I'm currently missing is the short staff, that loving thing always takes me forever to find.
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Jul 30, 2020 18:12
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Vi and Saxx is a 100% viable and useful endgame RPC loadout. Vi is generally considered either the #1 or #2 RPC (with Saxx being a solid #3), depending on how much you value her spellcasting. Valkyries are a great class; their Cheat Death ability has an extremely high trigger rate, so it's actually really useful, and there are some really nice polearms to take advantage of their class skill bonus. Polearms don't do as much damage as the best swords, but you can get really good ones with nice status effects pretty early and ride them for the whole game. Personally, Sparkle is fine, and absolutely nails the "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed novice" which I kinda like, and there's no real harm in having two Rangers. That said, Vi is just better and you can take her basically anywhere. I think there's only one place in the whole game she objects to entering, and that's because you need both RPC slots free for that area. PurpleXVI posted:Only one I'm currently missing is the short staff, that loving thing always takes me forever to find. I don't think I've seen a short staff in my entire White Wolf's Mod playthrough so far.
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Jul 30, 2020 18:37
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Zurai posted:That said, Vi is just better and you can take her basically anywhere. I think there's only one place in the whole game she objects to entering, and that's because you need both RPC slots free for that area. If only, I actually prefer the third end-game RPC that we haven't met yet because he doesn't complain about several large locations that Vi will demand to be excused from. Bayjin, Sea Caves and the Rapax Rift
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Jul 30, 2020 18:59
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PurpleXVI posted:If only, I actually prefer the third end-game RPC that we haven't met yet because he doesn't complain about several large locations that Vi will demand to be excused from. Oh, whoops. I genuinely thought she didn't mind those places. Ah well.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:02
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Nemo2342 posted:Ah, Antone. Before they nerfed it into the ground, you used to be able to pick pocket some great gear from him with a little save scumming. By the way, is the Steam-version running Wizfast, or do I still need that? It seems like the game runs faster (including the battles) than I remember, but that could just be the influence of having a non-ancient computer.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:18
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There are 2 areas that are almost universal no-go zones. There's one that needs both RPC slots open for story purposes that no one will go to without complaining, and another that needs one RPC slot open that has exactly one willing RPC. They really don't want you to have to dismiss an RPC to make room for a quest character.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:23
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PurpleXVI posted:Only one I'm currently missing is the short staff, that loving thing always takes me forever to find. Same here! I swear, you'd think goddamn stick would be easier to find! Also, yeah, the other contender for best RPC is great, especially because he fit better into my preferred party setup than Vi (my party already had a Valkyrie, so while she was still pretty great, she ended up just being a watered-down version of her). The other guy's class, I think, is one most players are going to overlook unless specifically aiming to use some of the less-exciting classes, so there's less redundancy. Also, gonna be honest, it's a real shame Male Cunning Voice 1 didn't make it onto any of the party. His commentary tends to be some of the best, because while everyone else is doing their fantasy adventure shtick, he's doing the whole Goodfellas routine, and I think his commentary if you select him for a certain decision is possibly the funniest bit of PC chatter in the game. For those of you planning to try Wiz8 for yourselves, definitely pick Male Cunning 1, you won't regret it.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:28
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PurpleXVI posted:I really wish there was a fan patch or mod of some sort to fix the atrocious draw distance, it always feels like the part of the game that has, technically, aged the worst, and it somewhat spoils the more open areas if you can get up anywhere a bit tall. You can, in fact, fix the view distance! Get the Cosmic Forge editor for modding the game files. Open the location editor in their wonderfully 2000s UI, pick a location and be greeted with this:  Go to "General Parameters" and change the view distance to whatever you'd like. Do this for every location in the game, because the value is individual to each of them. You can now see forever, or at least further than your dog in front of you. The caveat is that changing the view distance means you might see some seams in the world that you're not supposed to see, and that supposedly this can cause the game to load more stuff than it supports in some areas, causing crashes. I've never actually tried it. Googling found an overhaul mod which apparently includes some tested view distance increases, but it also has a bunch of grognard bullshit that you definitely don't want. Also recruit Vi, drop Saxx, suffer Sparkle forever.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:28
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I remember from old experiences with the Cosmic Forge editor that editing areas/items you've already encountered would tend to lead to a hard crash. Is it the same for the view distance?
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Jul 30, 2020 19:32
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EclecticTastes posted:For those of you planning to try Wiz8 for yourselves, definitely pick Male Cunning 1, you won't regret it. I'm partial to the male eccentric voice where he's writing a book. I've only beaten Wiz8 once, and for some reason I remember really liking the Scandinavian farmgirl voice so that's what I suggested for Aurora here. The Southern belle voice I remember being kind of eh on until you find the fake Astral Dominae. Her reaction to that is amazing.
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Jul 30, 2020 19:35
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