jefklakscodex/content/articles/wizardry8-tips.md

image	date	title	tags	aliases
/games/pc/wizardry-8/wiz8.jpg	2007-06-17	Wizardry 8: General Tips	Wizardry8	/articles/guides/wizardry8-tips/

Legal notice: Most tips, tricks, howtos and guides are - not - originally created by me. They are scattered throughout the Internet, and this site contains a bunch of information found on other sites. Therefore, I am not responsible for any wrong information, or grammatical faults. If anybody notices his own text and would like to have it removed, please email me!

A warm welcome to you, stranger. Right here where you stand, you will eventually be able to find some very useful information about the best Role-playing game I've played ever on the PC! Isn't that marvelous? Let me start directly with the tips: number one - if you are looking for spoiler quest information or a walktrough, you are on the wrong place click on the related articles in the navigation bar to your left. Otherwise, read on! The beautiful world map to your right has been provided by the late Flamestryke. If you are eager to visit her site and actually 'navigate' the worldmap, please do so by surfing to her recovered wiz8 guide. If you are a first time player, please read the tips carefully, some might actually save your day on Dominus! (the planet) Oh; the tips were collected from several forums and websites and most of them are my own of course. You can copy everything if you like, but keep in mind some things are not home-made. Oh forgive my rambling, let's just get on with it...

• Earth realm: spell chameleon to hide from enemy mobs, really works. Does NOT work with the "Light" spell.
• Don’t be afraid to use the bombs/potions/powders/scrolls found in the game. I think some people (like myself) save them for a rainy day and end up never using them.
• They are handy for a young party before it comes into its own. (Just remember to delegate the bomb throwing duties to a character who has a decent throwing/sling score.)
• Hypnotic Lure (or the lava lamp) is used to lure enemies to a certain place. Choose a corner and attack them from the back
• You'll be able to get x2 damage that way! (No magic of course)
• Use the terrain: run to narrow locations to pick off the enemy one by one if it's too hard for you.
• Also be sure to rest in corners, to avoid being surrounded while your camping was disrupted. (Cast "Shadow Hound" from the Air realm to decrease)
• You can switch ammo/reload in combat, without have to "equip" for the turn, by right-clicking on the character and moving arrows/stones/quarrels/bolts between the character's inventory and the secondary weapon slot.
• While in combat and fighting, you can change party formation, and your new party formation will occur in the beginning of next round.
• You can have all your troops target the same monster by holding SHIFT and clicking on it.
• You can freeze monster animations in combat by holding down CTRL, making it easier to click on them. (SHIFT+CTRL also works!)
• About formations: try to keep everyone in the middle/rear/back so monsters won't run over you and you can protect weak members in the back more easily. You'll also be able to move your fighter to the front if an enemy is JUST out of reach. You can move him into melee position w/o hitting the walk button!!
• As was pointed out before, you don't have to wait to initiate combat, you can do it first with the sword button. One tactic I love is with the the X-ray spell up. Sneak up on the red dots - this is kind of an art that depends on the terrain. You don't want to be close enough to have them notice you. But you want to be close enough so that if you cast an area effect spell at their general location (for this sonic boom is my favorite) it will effect at least one of them and effectively draw them into melee. The advantage is when you engage them, you'll often gain surprise (chameleon helps here too). So in that first free round, you cast the one area effect damage spell and otherwise buff up for the fight.
• In certain parts of the game there are patrols of friendly people. If you stay close to them, they'll help you in your fights. Or you could also watch the fun and don't help the patrols and let them die - that way you'll get some nice items from "friendly" treasures! They are also influenced by positive magic like soul shield - you can even heal them! Whenever using resurrection powders, make sure the person using it isn't blind, they may pick a wrong target, like an alive character, thus wasting one of your precious powders early in the game.

• Right click on a skill to check the controlling attributes. The higher controlling attributes the character have, the faster the skill will raise. If you like to kill monsters with magic, have someone with high mythology skill (which has the controlling attributes intelligence and senses), and take advantage of your enemies weaknesses. That way you won't need to notice the hard way water magic doesn't do very well on fish enemies... (Rapax have high fire resistance!) Certain spells will only increase your skills in combat. For example, you can cast stamina all you want outside of combat and won't see an increase in your water magic. However, you can use "fake combat" by initiating combat (even if there are no enemies around), and then cast stamina or rest all on your tired adventurers, and you're skills will increase!
• Magic items that have limited charges may be recharged by selling them to a vendor, then immediately buying them back. The item will be fully charged! This is the only way I've found to recharge items. You will lose a bit of money on the deal, of course, because vendors like to "buy low, sell high". How much depends on the vendor and your communications skill. Note: there are some items that you shouldn't use the last charge from, or the item will disappear (mana stones). Every time you use these items, you have a chance to improve the skill used for the item (usually the Artifacts skill).
Psionic Blast is a great spell because it goes around corners and attacks enemies you cannot see. Area effect spells go a short distance around one corner, if you place them right, but Psionic Blast, like insanity and sleep, hit all members of the targeted group equally, wherever they are hiding, if you can target on even one of them. It's a good damage spell too, with reasonable cost (10/L) and a chance to cause insanity as a bonus. It's fun to hear unseen enemies fighting each other, off somewhere in the distance.
• Powercast does not help "spells" cast by bards or gadgeteers - no need to maximize to 100 INT!
At the fountain in Trynton there's a riddle which increases ALL your chars +5 INT so never put more points than 95 into INT... Develop the bow skill (or throwing / sling) of at least 2 characters. By the time you get to the fifth or sixth level, it really helps in melee. Besides there's nothing worse than being stuck after being surprised waiting to move and not being able to do anything except deplete spell points. Ranged attacks are great for just chipping away the hit points of monsters.

• The open road is very dangerous in the beginning of the game (especially the road to Arnika), your party will have only a few items of weak equipment, but your enemies, with a few fixed exceptions, are randomly created or re-spawned near the level of your party (they go up in level as you do). Therefore most experienced players move fairly quickly through the open road portions of the early game, until civilization is first reached. There you will find help, equipment, and less dangerous initial experience. Soon you will be strong enough to take on almost any location in the game that seems like a logical next choice.
• If your party suddenly gets attacked from a new direction, don't waste a turn "moving" to turn around. Just change formations!
• Armormelt is definitely a good spell, there is no other one you can cast on enemies that is never resisted and cannot be removed for the entire duration.
• Don't pick every spell when leveling up, you CAN save spell pick points until later (for level 6 & higher & bishops)
• Every single level 1 - 5 spellbook can be bought at NPC locations, except mind stab (psionics).
• When you get the teleport spell, and if you have at least 2 such casters in your party, keep a portal in both the Umpani and T'Rang bases. This allows you access to the portals there, so zipping around Domina becomes a breeze! (air magic realm needed)
• Make your bards and gadgeteers female because the only stamina-regenerating items are restricted to women.
• + Regenerating items really help OUTSIDE combat, but never (enough) while in combat mode. The Lord his regen health also works much quicker when outside of combat. Keep in mind gadgeteers & bards need a lot of stamina, so VIT/PIE is an interesting stat...
• Specialize: if you have two characters w/the Wiz spell books, have one of them focus on Fire and another on Water. Two fighters? Have one use swords and the other axes. You'll encounter lots of different situations and you'll be prepared for all.
• Tired of insanity causing your otherwise reliable fighter types to shred your party in one round or before you can cure him? Enter the character screen and lock the weapons choice to his bow and remove the ammo to his personal inventory. You are now safe from any danger whatsoever.
• Tired of being encountered by strong monsters who cast fireballs, breath fire, poison, etc., and - having two hitpoints left after the first turn - hoping, that the healing spells come fast enough in the second turn? Cast a Heal All spell in the *first* turn if you run into such monsters. (This often saved my party's lives!) alchemy bug/misfeature. it seems that mixing 2-5 stacked potions at once vs. 1 potion nets you the same boost in alchemy skill. In other words, if you are patient (aka obsessive-compulsive), the best way to maximize alchemy skill increases is to unstack all your mixing ingredients first. it's slower and annoying, but it would seem to theoretically boost your skill 5x as fast.
• This also works for artifacts training: when potions are mixed, unstack them and try to identify them one by one.
• Avoid weapons with 'to hit' penalties like the plague early in the game. You might think that lance with 7-21 damage and a 4% chance to insta kill looks dead cool compared to your awl pike, but that -2 to hit penalty will mean that you will end up doing far less damage in the long run. I know "-1 to hit" and "-2 to hit" do not sound like much, but I read them as "-10 weapon skill" and "-20 weapon skill" because that is more like what they are.
• Watch out with profession changing stuff: if you are a gadgeteer, your omnigun will stop to develop... Only choose another profession wich has the same skills (basically) as the old one. For instance: a ninja uses alchemy and ranged combat, a ranger does too. They both require the same stats.
• Locks with 8 tumblers need at least a skill of 75% locks & traps to even have a chance to open it... Knock-knocks (earth realm) really helps!
• Also, your fighter could try to force the lock (STR based) which may just work. Watch out for traps while doing something like that!
• The fountain with Lord Braffit in Arnika restores lost hit points (drained). Beware: only 3 uses throughout the WHOLE game!
• He'Li buys potions at a (slight) higher price than other NPC stores.
• To Survive you will need protection from magic. Magic protection is hardly necessary for about the first third of the game, but when you do need it as the game
progresses - you need it A LOT. Magic protection varies, but the two main spells you’ll need are element shield and soul shield (and magic screen is highly recommended as well).

• Watch your Weight! Your weight limit should be white in color like the rest of your stats, if its blue your carrying to much and it adversely impacts your AC and attack rating (yellow is worse, red the worst). It will also drop your stamina when walking/running around. Note: you can always drop stuff and it won’t disappear (just remember where you dropped though).
• Running away is sometimes the only logical solution... Use flash powders to blind enemies or even KO them.
• Save before encounters with powerful NPCs. Not only to reload if your party failed but also to reload if the enemy didn't drop the stuff you wanted. Warning: to reload from chest contents, you'll need a savegame from entering the location (that's where the random contents are generated)...
• Resting 3x (wich is 24 hours in-game) will result in restocked items in shops. Interesting note: spellbooks from Anna in Arnika!
• You don't need to create a rogue in your party. When you get to Arnika, which you will do early in the game, the first NPC you meet is a rogue and he will join you.
• There are only a few locked or trapped items in the Monastery, and they can be forced open with minor damage to the forcer. Also, a ninja, bard and gadgeteer all have the locks & traps skill. And there are +10/20% skill items in the game usable by non-skill-enabled professions.
• Unless you're looking to fight as many battles as possible, don't camp too casually after every encounter. While you rest, monsters are still walking about, and new ones enter the region (i.e. they 'spawn')... Sometimes the roads will be overrun with bandit spawns, so keep your eyes out! You can also click on the camping screen to "wake" your party members. Sometimes they only need a 1-2 hour catnap (hehe especially for felpurrs) to recover fully.
• When you try to pickpocket and it says that there's no more items on the target, just ignore it and continue pickpocketing, you'll see that there's much more stuff to get. Always pickpocket until it says there's no more items for 5 straight times.
Too much stuff? Party dragging their packs around on the ground, your mage can barely lift her spellbook and everyone goes slo-mo in combat? Try storing your stuff in Arnika.. Since no one on Dominus *ever* sleeps, you can use the chest in Antone's bedroom, items never disappear when you leave an area...
• Leave auto-save on, and use quick save as often as possible! It'll save your butt more than once. To train your bard's music skill, take the viola in Arnika inn and charm npcs as much as possible (not the rapax as it may attack you if you fail).When you are out of stamina, rest and disturb quickly and your stamina is back! About 2-3 rest to gain a skill point.With about 2days of game time my lv 1 bard (previous rogue) has a music skill of 65.....
• An easy way to gain a lot of experience is to wander around, camp a lot and just kill every mob you see. The swamps / mines are a good place to go.
• When sharing items across characters in the inventory screen, ever wonder if you can simply /give/ an item to a different character without having to select that character first? Right-click on the target character instead of left-clicking!
• When your in the inventory screen try holding down the CTRL key.
• When deal with stacked items in the inventory screen try holding down the shift key and clicking on it takes 1 item out,2 for 2 clicks,3 for 3 clicks,etc. If you ever find yourself surrounded, kick a blind/terror Area of Effect spell in. They'll always go running / retreating.
• Holy water -- both the spell and item -- is the ultimate Eye for an Eye disabler. This area-effect spell is cheap to cast and most importantly, will not harm you. After a few Holy Water throws and casts, your offensive casters will be of use again.
• For you phased combat goers, instead of pressing enter to start your turn, you press the '\' button twice. This way, if you want to make a change, you can just enter continuous and change it. Also, if you for some reason started the turn normally, if you keep on switching, you will eventually reach the continuous mode where you can change your actions.

• The Valkryie's cheat death is stamina fueled. If your valk is getting low on life & you don't have healing abilities available to you/your healer doesn't have high enough initiative, then go ahead and have her take the hit; she will fall unconscious for a few rounds, but will have quite a bit more life than small healing abilities could do.
• Many people prefer disabling spells over damage spells in this game, because most of the parties I see are heavily melee-oriented. In a melee-oriented party part of the goal is to get close to the enemy to beat them down. Because of that goal, disabling spells are almost always a better option as they make situations safer, faster and more reliable. Damage spells tend to do much better when you have all spell-casters in your group (or very close)
• Watch out with the search option on: enemies will surprise you easier! Cast detect secrets or recruit a ranger (scouting).
• When shopping, often the store lists become disordered. You can fix that by simply selling a single item. The list is back in proper shape after the sale. This trick is especially useful when you're doing multiple purchases, sacking out 24 hours to refresh the list.
• When ever you read something and some of the words are in ALL CAPS, write it down. That includes sub-titles.
• Manage many save games by prefixing them with numbers 01 - 02 - ...; you'll get a nice overview on the load/save screen that way.
• Do you miss the detailed info about what you're hitting with and being hit by that Wiz7 provided? You can get it in Wiz8! Just go to Page 3 of the Options and check the "verbose" box - very interesting.
• Watch out with cursed items like bloodlust - you won't be able to "switch" to your ranged weapon...
• Guardian Angel "absorbs damage from any attack". Also it's a level 2 spell so you get it early on. It also disables the chance of being KOed.
• Prior to leveling up your spell caster, make sure that their primary spell casting skill is equal or greater than the required skill for that level BEFORE leveling up. This will allow you to select spells for that level. Pure casters begin at level 1, and hybrids at level 5. (Use +2 until level 5, then +3 / level)
• Don't waste a spell pick for Resurrection. Use the powders instead. Give every party member a couple of them. Yes they are expensive, but you find several free ones in the early game. Once the money starts rolling in, you will be able to afford them easily.
• Beg, borrow, buy, steal, and find *every* spellbook useful to your party. Even if you never plan on casting that particular spell, go ahead and use the book to learn it. You will gain additional spell points.
• When fighting the bronze beast guarding Al-Sedexus' temple (or any other difficult beasts with a lot of power like the hogars), use a single Summon Elemental potion or spell. He/they will ignore you for the most part to fight the Elemental and you can wail away at him/them!
• NPCs respond to your stupid questions or requests, like "hi, die, fuck, vampire, help, steal, ...". Very funny reactions! Use your map and add notes! You won't go around in circles that way...

Bonus stuff

This is a video a recorded a long time ago showcasing different things in the Wiz8 world.

{{< youtube "btgGjLmhmZQ" >}}