LAST EDITED ON Dec-22-10 AT 10:11 AM (Pacific)As a kid, I used to play Wizardry with a friend of mine (each made half the party and issued orders to our guys... a stone age attempt at coop play) on an Apple IIe back in the 80's.
I've just got my hands on the UWA and intend to go through the whole series. Given the linkage between parts 1, 2 an 3, here are my questions:
1. How necessary is a Thief? I know there is all sort of stuff that could be done with dual-classing (e.g. start as mage, get all the spells, then switch to Thief), but I'm not particularly interested in that. From what I remember of playing the game before, Calfo spell seemed to be more reliable than our Thief. Of course, the Thief could disarm, but most of the traps weren't fatal anyway... and the ones that were (Teleporter) weren't worth risking a disarm attempt.
2. Can a Bishop (or two) be an effective substitute for a Mage? I know he gets spells much more slowly. I seem to remember the teleport spell (Malor?) being very handy... and I don't remember our Bishop ever getting it.
I guess the point here is that I was going to throw together a very "holy" party -> lords (upgraded from priests or fighters), priests, bishops... but while I really like the theme, I don't want to hamstring myself unnecessarily.
Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
LAST EDITED ON Dec-22-10 AT 08:44 PM (Pacific)For your first game back in the series, keep it simple, 3 fighters, a thief, a priest, a mage. You will level much, much faster and you'll be strong from the get go. Your mage will also get the very important Malor (teleport) spell at level 13, which will make you progress even faster. The thief's job is to gather loot safely (those poison traps are nasty early on if you're deep in the maze).
As a side note, the version of Wizardry 1 in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives has a leveling bug where each time your charater levels up, its stats tend to go down more often then up, this makes your characters less strong and makes changing class practically impossible unless you use a cheat program. So it makes the game more difficult, but not unbeatable.
Also, Wizardry 1 through 5 in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives are in 4 colours only!
If you want to avoid the leveling bug, and play in 16 colours instead of 4, I suggest you download and play the Apple versions of scenarios 1 through 5.
To do so you'll need the AppleWin emulator: http://applewin.berlios.de/ (I haven't tryed it on Windows 7 yet, but it works perfectly on Windows XP)
Then, you'll need the Apple versions of the Wizadry disk images: ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/rpg/
And instructions within the zip file of my custom Wizardry scenario (DragonQuest) helps you get started: http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/dragonquest.htm
Snafaru