Anyone else having to resort to abusing the "new character = free money" trick?

What with the cost of repairs, identifying, guilds, learning things, buying things, and how creatures don't seem to drop much money..

• RE: Financial Woes,Neo -ur, 10:10 PM, Oct-10-00
  • RE: Financial Woes,Asrial, 10:57 PM, Oct-10-00
    • RE: Financial Woes+ comment on game difficulty,Stax_ -ur, 00:24 AM, Oct-11-00
      • RE: Financial Woes+ comment on game difficulty,Asrial, 02:11 PM, Oct-11-00
        • RE: Financial Woes comment on game difficulty,Goober -ur, 05:10 PM, Oct-11-00
          • RE: Financial Woes comment on game difficulty,Asrial, 05:45 PM, Oct-11-00
            • RE: Financial Woes comment on game difficulty,Goof -ur, 09:47 PM, Oct-11-00
              • Yes, that is probably the hardest part to balance,Llevram, 10:19 PM, Oct-11-00
                • RE: Yes, that is probably the hardest part to balance,Blaupanzer, 06:18 AM, Oct-12-00
                  • I guess I should ...,Llevram, 07:11 AM, Oct-12-00
                    • RE: I guess I should ...,Blaupanzer, 07:18 AM, Oct-12-00
        • RE: Financial Woes comment on game difficulty,GlennRN, 00:41 AM, Oct-14-00
          • Long reload/load times,Llevram, 07:36 AM, Oct-14-00
            • RE: Long reload/load times,GlennRN, 08:47 AM, Oct-14-00
      • RE: Financial Woes comment on game difficulty,mtkafka -ur, 01:29 AM, Oct-12-00
        • RE: Financial Woes comment on game difficulty,GlennRN, 00:50 AM, Oct-14-00

It really is EXTREMELY bad being a newbie in this game. I can attest to it because I have refrained from any kind of money cheats.

Not having Identify is bad. But what's worse is getting poisoned! For $125 per shot to cure poison, it's crazy. And the Cure Poison spell is 4th level Vine which is quite a ways away. Just as bad are some of the traps. $900 to cure Stone Head or whatever that spell is. I made a point of saving before each trap attempt.

And joining guilds early on? Forget it. It's just too much money.

The only viable solution I can come up with is to play with less than 6 characters. If I restart this game, that's certainly what I'll do. Also, having Identify and Cure Poison early are essential.

I did some research on store identifying and discovered that if you identify something you're going to sell (which we all do, in case you find that rare item disguised as a pos <grins>), when you sell it, you'll get more than you paid for identifying.

As an example, you identify an item and it takes 100 gold. When you sell it, you'll probably get somewhere around 200. You'll definitely get over the identifying price though.

As far as i can tell, the identifying of an item costs exactly half the price of the item, so identifying and then selling one item has no sense.

However, if you have, say, 6 identical(unidentified) bows in the inventory, and pay for the identification of one, all get identified and you get a nice profit selling the other five(2 times what you'd get without id'ing them!)

On another note, does anyone beside me feel the game is too easy? I suppose there are mostly Wizardry 7 veterans on this board. I mean, when i met a new(unknown) monster type in W7, i mostly got my butt kicked until i figured out a new strategy to deal with it (Glow mothras come to mind). Trying to get a challenge in W&W, i at first made a party of only 4 man, and played on hard - what a mistake. The extra experience gain far outweighted the increased monster difficulty and the game became kinda boring. Several parties later i discovered the hardest possible setting is playing with 6 man party on normal level. Also, it helps to 'take fate as it comes': When generating new party, take the first roll no matter how bad it is, and don't reload a game unless you're viped out completely. Makes you think twice about disarming that difficult stone grave trap

Stax_

It's pointless for those that know what the item is already going to be (from price and what it was found on and things like that), but not so for freaks like me that need to know EXACTLY what something is before I sell it <grins>

I'm not letting go of that +bazillion sword of death just because the smithy is trying to trick me into thinking it's a rusted long sword <grins>

As for game difficulty, I do have to agree. I've been playing with both settings (spawn, and difficulty) on default (which is the middle basically) and the only time I ever had any serious problems in combat was when I was level 1 and 2. There also isn't enough attacks happening to my liking. I'm playing a party of 6 and I think I'm going to go through the full game without doing any class changes (so it'll be a warrior/warrior/rogue/rogue/priest/wizard). I do reset the game a few times, but only because I hate death in any game that has a penalty for death (where you can't replace what was lost in an easy fashion) and so when one character dies, it's terminate game time.

You reset the game? You mean you reload it?

Er, yeah.

I run back to town and re-load my saved game, or I kill off all my characters somehow (usually by suicide runs through pillars of fire, heh)

Sorry for the confusion, forgot about the revert and reset adventures option. I don't trust revert.

I think this is one lesson that a lot of game designers are learning -- don't enact major penalties on game players.

In BG2 they give you an NPC up front that has a special ability to resurrect you early on. Identify is a level one spell. Cure poison is like level 3.

So when something bad happens you don't get this overwhelming sense of dread. You simply pay the price by losing some mana and time -- not 80% of the wealth you've accumlated over 4 hours.

Realism vs Playability.

And I thought it was odd that everything seemed so expensive, yet it only cost 65 gold to resusrrect my level 1 Gourk Warrior. I guess low level Gourks are a dime a dozen

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

Apparently $65 X 12 = $780 a dozen.

GO back to school and finish up my four-year degree ... the 2 two-year degrees aren't cutting it

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

LOL.

I must be reading wrong. I seem to be seeing that people are going back to town to reload. All you need to do is quit and reload. Rick has mentioned long reload times. I reload in 15 seconds on average with a 600 p3. I did load the larger install perhaps this helps.

Glenn RN
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I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.

So far, the longest (that I have timed) was just under 3 1/2 minutes. Saving usually only takes about 15 seconds. And I ma grouping 'load' time in with the time it takes to enter/exit town (which I seem to do much more of).

Even quitting (to then reload) takes a good 30 seconds.

Again, my system is right near the bottom of there acceptable scale (PII/266mhz/64 MB RAM)

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

Going in and out of town seems to take a bit longer maybe 30 seconds. Save and quit are instantaneous.

Glenn RN
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I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.

>On another note, does anyone beside
>me feel the game is
>too easy? I suppose there
>are mostly Wizardry 7 veterans
>on this board. (snip)

I agree, the games combat is somewhat on the easy side, not too easy, but generally much more forgiving than wiz 7. I remember taking almost a week to get a full party to like level 5 equally in wiz 7 (ah that was a long time ago. . . ).

I think the balance is wrecked with the easy acquisitiions of lvl 5-7 spells. in the first day of playing i already had osme massive aoe spells, both sun and stone too!!!

i think this can be remedied in a patch . .. which i think is paramount because wiz games combat wise have always come off as more strategic to me than easy . . . not to say that ww is easy combat wise (i've faced some pretty tough battles alrdy) but compared to wiz 7, ww combat is a cakewalk!!!

although ill have to admit, i did learn to play one or two melee chars solo the first few levels, beefing them up, and then saving gold so that i could advance my mages quicker . . .

anyway, maybe they can do a diablo thing, have 3 versions of same game with higher difficulty thing. lotsa rpgs have to take that route i think becuase genrally (with the exception of mm 6 - 8) rpg's have been a tad easier combat wise the past few years and have less gameplay becuase of it . . .

WW is short a 10 for me, for this alone . . .

etc

Yeah, I dont think I have had a player die except in the fire pits Which took me the longest I read the walkthrough on it after about 10 attemts but still couldnt get through. I finally just took a crate and blocked the door.
I am still enjoying the hell out of the game and have had no lock ups except when I left active programs going on Windows which WW does not like. I am only in the snake temple and have made a few dumb errors (gave the Shaman the heal potion and screwed level one priest quest) but all in all its defrinitely CODS Light.

Glenn RN
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I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.