Of Over-Ambitious RPGs: Let's Play Wizardry 8

This started badly for me the moment samurai defined by their ability to wield two swords while (apparently) not wearing heavy armour came up. I'm a broken history geek like that. In the interest of heading off any potential samurai-related arguments, and somewhat in the theme of this thread so far, here's a painting of Miyamoto Musashi stabbing a whale:

Ah, but you see, he's a space-samurai. Not, like, a real, Earth samurai. Also he is a dragonman who breathes acid.

So Wizardry 8, even launched through Steam as a non-Steam game, does not play nice with the overlay and therefore cannot take Steam screenshots.

This brought me to something called greenshot, Greenshot is a goddamn amazing screenshot utility. It lets you take screenshots in fullscreen games. No more printscreen shenanigans!

We leave the land of the Softshell Crabs that almost killed two of our dhudes and say hello to the big ominous door.



Running involves holding down shift and moving. You move much faster, but you cannot search while running! Also, you're less stealthy, don't notice enemies as well, and it drains hella Stamina.

Anyway, we open the door. And it's ... kinda creepy inside.



Also filled with slimes.



Slimes which take damage from physical, hurray! That's especially good because, uh, Jaq is not very good at this whole casting spells thing yet.



Boom, 5 damage. Ow.

I queue up a walk order when they get near so that I can reorient and make sure Eru goes to work with his swords.



And then Eru goes to work with his swords.

We go down the corridor and come up a ramp and suddenly BATS EVERYWHERE.



Well, not quite everywhere. Also they each have 5 HP.

But they do get some bites in.



Not very many, though... and then they die.



Jaq dear, first off, they're bats, and second, I never forget to pillage the bodies.

But there's nothing to pillage, so instead we go exploring around the room.



Gee, that looks like an interesting and solid door that I shall certainly be seeing again. Also, there's something... moving on the other side of it. Maybe it's for the better that it's bolted for now...

There are two corridors leading out of this room, and I head up the one that looks shortest.

And oh look, another slime. Yawn. I've killed three, what's just one -



That is a different thing.


It shoots at the party as we close, hitting SWB, but then it's up-close-and-personal time.



Ozzo's prayer goes unanswered, Jaq has nothing in the way of useful spells to cast, and nobody seems to be able to actually do damage to the damn thing.



Its pseudopodal touch nauseates Eru, and he incurs a chance to fail actions, instead gagging helplessly, until the condition goes away.

With apologies to Jaq, Ozzo goes for the heal on Eru, who's far more useful in this fight.



Even with the nausea. Which goes away soon enough anyway.



And then finally, after far too many rounds of combat, Ler shoots it to death with her bow.

OH MY GOD

CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD SO MANY MEMORIES SO MANY FLASHBACKS TO LOVING THIS GAME OH MY GOD

Some of our party members have accrued enough experience to level up, and level them up I shall. (There are ways to powergame Wiz8 by limiting your rate of leveling. I will not be doing these.)



Jaq drops 3 points into Intelligence (her primary attribute, really) and a point each into Piety, Vitality, and Speed.



She and Ozzo aren't picking up any new spells this level, I think. Level 1 spells are all pretty useless and can be bought soon enough, anyway; I want to save the spell selection points for the good stuff.



Wizardry applies to all of her spell schools, and she spends a goodly amount of time hitting things with her (2H reach weapon) quarterstaff, which is long enough to hit enemies on the outside of the formation despite her position in the center.


Fox levels up as well.



Nothing particularly surprising here. Note that Dex increases number of attacks, to-hit, and attack penetration for his attacks.



I forgot to screenshot his skill choices, but they're dead simple; ranged combat, Engineering, Modern Weapon.


Ler levels up as well!



Daggers are Dex.



She uses a bow because bows are so much better than thrown weapons in this game. Also because the Samurai can use shuriken and the Rogue can't.




And last but not least, Ozzo levels up.



He uses a Sling, because he doesn't get to use a bow, the poor Faerie.

Childhood??? Sigh. I still have these disks in here in my office desk. I played thru Bane of the Cosmic Forge 3 times. I did Wiz 8 twice. I adored the character depth and options and combat so much. Aaron you are killing me with this!

Grumble. Not sure I still have the manuals and key info

The room we just cleared of the Noxious Slime that was inhabiting it turns out to be a little study / library.



And in it, we find a nice little bonus: A spellbook for Ozzo!



Not that, y'know, we don't already have someone who can cast Light. But it'll increase his Fire spell points, which is very nice.

So we head back to that other passage, and head down it a little ways. It splits!



Good thing we have a map, innit.



The automapper for Wizardry 8 is actually quite decent. Thank heavens.

We immediately run into a pack of rats and I realize that I forgot to camp after fighting the Noxious Slime. Whoops. Eru even gets bitten!



Then we murder the fuck out of the rats.





Skill increases make me very happy. Being out of mana and low on HP does not make me very happy, so we camp. And our camp is promptly interrupted.



Bloody hell! Thankfully, it's just one Green Slime. Easy pickings.

EruditeDragon levels up!



Different classes have different exp requirements to level. Samurai have significantly more than, say, Rogues.



Strength is certainly Eru's most important stat, but he needs other things as well. In fact, he needs everything other than Piety. But we'll focus on Strength and alternate leveling Dex/Vit with Speed/Senses (one point in Int every level). He also needs a lot of skills.



We max Sword for its 25% bonus on the skill points we put into it and Critical Strike because who doesn't like instantly killing things? And then a point each in Dual Weapons, Close Combat, and Ranged Combat.


Speak With Bread levels as well, bringing our party to full-on level 2.



Dexterity is, unsurprisingly, the most important stat for a Ranger.



That doesn't mean that Strength (bow scaling), Senses and Intelligence (Ranged Combat, Scouting), and Speed (more actions) aren't important as well.

But at least her skills situation is very simple.




Finally, we manage to camp, kill the rat that ran away when it bothers us, camp again, and be full on HP and mana. Phew. Time to start exploring again!

Those are some pretty monstrously large roaches.

Alright now. Wait for it...



Wait for it...



Ohh, Eru, you make me so happy sometimes.


We find this cute little hat that Ozzo claims, since he can't wear any other hats:



This cannot be used by any class that can learn the Locks & Traps skill. It exists only to give you that minimum amount of L&T so that you don't get stuck in the plot. An excellent choice to add it, in my opinion. We also find another Short Bow (excellent because we just ran out of shuriken).



Religious receipts? In a monastery? Color me fuckin' shocked.

Clearly there is a perfectly senseless reason why this is locked and unlocking it is clearly the right choice. Yes? Yes. Green tumbler means it's in the "open" position. This lock is very easy to pick; there are much, much harder ones.

And it opens, and -



whoever could possibly have called that.

We kill them eventually. But they do get a number of bites in on Eru, who's in some moderate pain, while people keep failing to penetrate the carapace with arrows and sling stones.



There's a second cell off to the side, and it has more ... interesting things. Like a ring, a pair of boots...



... a skeleton, and a note.



Totally not ominous in the slightest!

We rest up, level the two guys who leveled, and continue exploring.

Huh... that's actually a nice piece of detail there. Something I miss a lot in newer RPGs is the attention to detail with even the utterly mundane stuff like that. Adds to the feel of the world, if nothing else.

Wait a minute... Is Grey Fox... narrating as if he's a character in a novel?

That is... the coolest character quirk I've seen in a while. We need more of that kind of thing in games.

Yeah, Grey Fox's personality choice narrates. It's pretty awesome, though I usually reserve that personality choice for a Bard (for obvious reasons). :)

In the meantime, Jaq makes a funny.



Instead of walking, we run, to make up the distance faster.



Then we fight it.



The Gods answer Ozzo's prayer with... Stamina restoration. Kinda useless, oh well.

Killing the Noxious Slime, though, gets us enough experience for Jaq and Ozzo to level, and they both pick up new spells; Ozzo grabs Identify Item, and immediately makes use of it:



(I give the ring to Eru, since he takes by far the majority of the attacks.)

Jaq picks up a spell, too!



And immediately puts it to good use.



We finish clearing out the area, finding another bookcase with mundane notes relating to the "Brotherhood of the Ascension", and it's now time to knock on a nice, shiny door that totally doesn't have anything behind it, right? Oh wait, I have a radar for a reason.

Aaron - try leveling artifacts on me, perhaps, since I seem to be doing a lot of the scouting?

Also, <waves to rest of party>.

This is highly entertaining! Also: I hope I didn't miss that because I skipped the stat info (I'm just here to hear the Wookie talk and the Hobbit complain), but what exactly does the "Knock-Knock Skill" do?

I'm not wasting skill points on Artifacts when our Priest has Identify Item. :)

"Knock-Knock Skill" relates to a spell in the Earth school that helps with unlocking doors. I'll explain it when it becomes relevant.


So, uh, last we checked we were opening a door. Which is always a risky business, right?



Especially when behind the door is something called King Crab. It doesn't quite have as much health as the entire party put together, though.



It moves to melee range, we smack it around a bit, and Ozzo's prayers bring a guardian angel over our Ranger. Then combat begins in earnest; we're plinking away at it, and it's smacking Eru around (and also Fox and SWB, a little bit).



The healing manages to mostly keep pace, despite a Heal Wounds fizzling out, and the King Crab loses focus and begins to hit other people as well.



Then something very amusing happens.



So Arrows have a special ability which is a chance to drain an enemy's stamina when they hit the enemy. Observe:



That Stamina drain must have proc'd and the King Crab was knocked unconscious, and was promptly beaten to death at great length without recovering consciousness.

We explore the room, loot a bunch of stuff, and open a very familiar-looking door.

Is Mage one of those classes that starts out pretty useless but by the endgame has acquired god-like powers?

Also, this thread is making me want to get back into the Dark Spire.

We got off exploring, and eventually find a river running through the tunnels and a bizarre contraption.



We ignore, for now, the shiny red button and cross the bridge to loot the storeroom on the other side.



Traps work in a pretty self-explanatory fashion. You inspect them first:



Then you find what trap you think it is and disarm the pieces.



Finish by looting the chest.




We hop into the river to wipe out some piranhas - sorry, Tanika Fish - that happen by.



They bite pretty hard, I must say.



But we kill them all and keep exploring, finally finding a very familiar-looking waterfall... and a very familiar looking pouch of dust.



We come back around through the monastery and through that door that we unlocked after killing the King Crab and prepare to ascend another ramp into yet another unknown area. May it be as filled with delicious experience and items.

Well, Mage starts out kinda meh (Frost and Energy Blast are both pretty weak) but with a lot of earlygame potential (Magic Missile, various group buffs), and becomes absolutely essential by midgame even if just for the buffs a Mage offers.

But there's also Fireball, y'know? :)

Excellent. I shall try not to die before then.

Hmmm, ominous corridor...



Maybe let's take a look at the odd contraption before we go into the room up ahead, eh?



It's a big red button. Of course I'm going to push it!



And it makes the bridge go up! Wow! That's some awesome technology right there. Now, let's go back down so I can make sure that -



Oh. Well. Okay then.


First things first, I check out that door over there. It's locked, and there's some weird circular key thing.



Okay, well, over to the other side. There's a fork, and I go right first.



And I find a dude! No, like, a not enemy dude.



And he even likes to talk. How cool is that!



I do some trading (sell random crap, buy some better armor and some musket balls for Fox) and settle down for some talking.

I pay him a little bit to tell me about the Monastery. Not much useful information, but it's not much gold.



Gee, that sounds like a plot hook!



And he answers a couple of other questions.

Now, I could just go with my pre-knowledge of the game and ask him all sorts of questions, but instead, if you guys want to ask a character questions (you basically just do it by keywords), ask away.

In the meantime, there's a chest over there. Let's steal his stuff, because this is an RPG, and that's what we do!



Silly Ler, don't fail at things.



What's that? You need heals?



Note: Fizzling spells can still level up your skill.

There's now only one corridor left to explore. Going down one side, after a twist and a turn, we come to an opening on the right of the -



Fuck that, let's take a look at the other side.





Well, not that much particularly useful. This safe needs a key, it's worth pointing out.

Now I'm going to take a break from the game for a bit and get some work / fooding done before I fight the giant spider. :)

I swear I read that last bit as "fight the giant spoiler." Hel-lo, Vicodin brain...

Why hello there, Mr Giant Spider.



The gods apparently think that what we really needed wasn't, oh, Bless or Enchanted Weapon, but rather money.



As Gregor closes, we fill him with arrows, stones, and quarrels. None of them do very much damage, other than Speak With Bread's shots with her crossbow, which consistently hit for 8-10 damage.



Gregor also consistently hits, and soon Ozzo's mana is depleted from healing. But Gregor's Stamina is low, and he starts falling unconscious mid-round, getting in only one attack out of his maximum three. This is great, because otherwise Eru would be fucked.

Eru's actually been swigging down healing potions instead of swinging his sword, and he's still almost dead.



This goes on for a few rounds. Not much actual damage gets dealt, but he slowly, slowly goes down in health.

I shift Ler to the front to start using her daggers, since she ran out of arrows.



And Gregor finally dies after more than a dozen rounds of combat and after coming within 2 HP of killing Eru three times.



Places to go, things to see! On the right is one doorway that isn't visible, the corridor down to the lower levels. We go through the other right-side door!



How very odd.

The first sarcophagus we open has a pair of mail mittens. The second one...



Ow.

Drinking from the water fountain tops off our health, and we keep opening sarcophagi... to find our first undead enemy!



Easy kill.

We finish that room off and check out another room, finding an interesting plaque:



Also a statue that opens a trap door that would send us down to the lower levels.



Next room looks interesting...



And clearly not a trap, amirite?



Oh hey, look at that.

Jaq opens up with Frost, after fizzling on Magic Missiles. The Roach in question is somewhat unhappy.



The Roaches charge, surrounding the party and preventing Eru's breath from hitting more than two or three. While surrounding the party, since there isn't anyone holding up the actual rear spot, they get some painful blows in.



But they're only Roaches, and they die in one hit each, so...



Other than the experience from the roaches, we don't get anything from the room (but hey, experience and skill points), so we continue onwards... and find the very last room of the level.



Such an inviting big red button! Clearly I should go press it.

SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO PRESS BIG RED BUTTONS?

Jaq fizzles her Magic Missiles - again - but Eru starts us off in style with some nice acid.



The spiders are a little bit uncoordinated and make the fight a bit easier for us, one mis-shot at a time. (Ozzo's prayer gave Fox a Guardian Spirit, which is the icon next to his name. Contrary to what I thought it does, Guardian Spirit simply absorbs damage before it does HP damage.)



All told these spiders aren't actually that big of a deal. Nothing compared to Gregor, that's for sure.



And with the level that Fox gets from this fight, he picks up another attachment/modification to his Omnigun!

HAAAAT!

I shall call him Posey, and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Posey!

We approach The Button.



Oooh, me, me!

We press it, and we hear a grinding sound from ... the direction of Gregor's hall! We race over there and find the gate that had been barred now mysteriously open.



What a wonderful event.

I take this opportunity to repeatedly rest and identify items, picking up a few points of Divinity and Mental Magic along the way. More importantly, I identify a number of useful things, such as Resurrection Powder, lots of healing potions and stat-curing potions, and these:





And now it's time to go onwards and upwards.

(There's still one item I wasn't able to identify, which means I need at least 18 Mental mana to ID it. That'll be next level, no worries.)

"Jaq identified the bugs. They're roaches!"

No shit, Sherlock.

With the way more than one character 'identified' the roaches I can't help picturing the whole party just going "OH GROSS ROACHES" when the buggers flooded into the room.

I dunno, maybe they were eaten by the giant fucking spider, killed by the King Crab, or devoured whole by roaches, bats, and rats?

Maybe?



Like these guys right here?



That have a wicked fucking bite?

Of course, they die nearly instantly because they have less than 20 health, so just about any two hits that actually penetrates kills 'em. Still, they hurt a surprisingly large amount.

We get to our first 3-tumbler lock, and I mostly leave it alone to wait for when I have the Knock-Knock spell to boost my ability to pick the damn thing.



If I had been bothering to level Locks & Traps, this would be easy, but what kind of fun would that be? Then Ler would do so much less damage. :)

We head up the ramp to the left, that leads into a room of some kind with a glass window. In it are two somewhat annoying critters.



They're camouflaged, which means that you can't see them until you get really close... unless your Ranger spots them. Also, they shoot nauseating bolts of goo.

EruditeDragon shows off what big strong muscles Samurai have by demonstrating the Samurai superskill:



It's not much of a chance to proc, but four swings instead of one is goooood times.

Sadly, there's not really anything to do in this room, because all of the machines tell us the same thing.

We continue exploring.



The beds are still laid out in orderly fashion and nobody's really done a thorough looting of this place. And why haven't the rats pissed all over the beds? Why? This place confuses me.





... It occurs to me, Jacquelle, that we are not in fact inside the Meditation Room, are we? No?

And you leveled off of the seekers, didn't you? Yes?

And you have a new spell you'd like to show off now, don't you.





Ohhh yes, that's the stuff.

Not to be outdone (spoilers: he totally is outdone), EruditeDragon follows it up with some acid breath.



The rats are polished off with ease, and we take a tour of the Meditation Room, examining all of the bookshelves for anything interesting.

We find a couple of spellbooks for Ozzo, some miscellaneous stuff, and a couple of interesting things for Fox, gadget-wise.



What's that? Overcook? Why, if you insist!






A microwave chip and a magnifying glass.

Gadgeteers can eventually put things together to make technomagical gadget items, so eventually we'll combine these with other items to make awesome things!



But for now, they just sit in the inventory, chillin'.

Around this time, our Lord and Ranger hit level 5 and get access to basic Wizardry and Alchemical spells, respectively. I don't worry about it too much, because frankly, it's not worth the skill points to worry about it. But I'll toss one point into it every level, just for kicks.

I AM THE MASTER OF FIRE. Bow before me.

We keep exploring, killing group after group of enemies. Some loot finds its way into our hands as we do. A few-odd items are actually upgrades, particularly the Quilt Tunics (+4 AC) that replace our Robes (+2 AC), Cloth Shirts (+1 AC), and Suede Doublets (+3 AC). Jacquelle remains with the Doublet (which is Minimal armor, and therefore something she can wear) while Ozzo, being a Faerie, can't really wear anything other than his starting gear. Heh.

The bandits, which we obliterate, throw knives rather than simply attacking, which means Ozzo actually gets hurt pretty bad in one round, but he pulls through.





We also find some inaccessible things. Hmmm, perhaps we can find a way to... break this glass... and loot the armor within...



And as we keep exploring, we find another interesting room.



We go up the ramp, kill the seekers...



And find something most intriguing. A key, we find.



A crude iron key. Hmmm.

And a Lightning Rod, our Gadgeteer's first Gadget.



We also find another sheet of glass, unbreakable by our fists or hammers, through which we see a sheaf of paper. Hmmmm.



Obviously, that key gets used somewhere in here. But where?

Could it be...

Why, yes, of course.

We run over to the Meditation Room. And the key fits.

Jacquelle steps inside the room and Fireballs. Instantly, five bats and a Dusk Bat die.



But what is in this room? Well, there's some... strange contraption here...



As set, it doesn't appear to do anything.

One to the right... still nothing.

All the way to the right? Suddenly, the building shakes and quakes! It's a massive, ginormous earthquake!



We rush out of the meditation room and as soon as we enter the next area, we see something fascinating.



The glass window... it's broken!

I give it to SWB, because Senses is awesome for a Ranger.

Remember that 3-tumbler crate?



This is what Knock-Knock does. The blue tumbler will not go down simply by messing up a pick-a-tumbler check, so that means that there are only two tumblers for Ler to deal with. It opens in short order.

There were a couple other places to check for shattered glass, I think to myself. That room up the ramp where the seekers were...



What's that notebook next to that strange humming screen that only says "Access Denied" say?



And I find this on the floor...



...and check each of the bookshelves for anything interesting.







I also go down to the case where the armor piece was, and find what Eru is pleased to describe as "Quite the find!".



A very nice piece of Samurai armor.

Finally, finally, I'm out of things to dick around doing in the Monastery and it's time to actually get on with the plot. A little bit. Before I go dick around and kill things outside.

I wonder who this dude is, anyway?





How convenient! He totally just told us.







Well, that's simple enough. Let's wrap this up, finish looting the room, it's time to -



Oh hey, another dude.



Wow, talk about obviously evil.



Sounds like our work is cut out for us. Disable this world-shattering explosive the Dark Savant has rigged up, then ascend to Godhood. All in a day's arbitrary-amount-of-time's work, I suppose!

But uh, if he has a space ship, why didn't he just come down and kill me with the laser batteries that shot down the ship I was on?

The world may never know. But let's get out of here before he decides to do it.