Hi just wanted to share my party with you guys now that I have just beaten the game. I didn't have a very high power party really, more of a spread out cover everything party. I started with:
dracon fighter
mook ranger
human bard
mook gadgeteer
2 elven bishopsMy fighter sucked and knocked out people less than my gadgeteer or my ranger. He had a ton of hitpoints, but no one wanted to target him. Therefore he was more for carrying capacity and sheer damage. My bard came in a close second in damage however. With bloodlust I've seen her do 200+ damage per round. My ranger and gadgeteer knocked out everything in sight. They were the main impetus behind my party. My
bishops covered all my spell books as neither my gadgeteer, bard, nor fighter could cast spells. My ranger is so busy shooting arrows and swinging his giant sword that by the end of the game I could barely cast level 2 alchemist spells with him. But I still got by with this strategy.
I recruited Vi, and rfs 81 midgame to buff up my melee capabilities, my gadgeteer and ranger handled range, while my two bishops threw up protection spells and provided my bard with stamina.
So I had no problems at all getting to arnika. My fighter k.o.'ed the big roach boss so he died quickly. I've heard a lot of complaints about the difficulty of this game, but normal difficulty level seems quite manageable to me. I didn't die a single time until I accidentally fell off the top bough when a trynnie patrol wandered by and shoved me to the side with its stupid zone of control thing. Actually as a side note, I died being crushed by the automatic door right before you meet tantris t'rang. Then reciprocally, I died at the umpani base camp because of another automatic door. Funny how I died to such things as much as to things designed to kill me. Anyways back to Trynton. Of course I had no idea what I was doing at that time, so when I met the ratkin boss dude, I tried to pickpocket him and he promptly jumped me. I got off a lucky paralyze and killed him in four rounds. Unbelievable yes? Thus I found myself at a tender level 9, holding the cane corpus and the astral dominae with the ratkin razuka trying to kill me at every turn. I also found 2 thieves daggers off the corpse and that made myles the most devastating character I had until he left me at the mines. He did more damage than the rest of my party combined... Anyways, I got extremely lost after that and went to the northern wilds and the mountain wilds since myles wouldn't go across the bridge to the umpani base camp. Thus I found myself fighting level 14-17 golems when I was level 10. I even ran into my first death in the mountain wilds as I walked into the barrow with the death lord. However, I leveled up once in the southern wilderness and got soul shield and elemental shield so I promptly returned to kick his bony butt. In the southern wilderness I met my second reload as the deathlord/sorceress combo really was too much for my party. They got off a death wish, death cloud, draining cloud, and like three fireballs before I could throw up my shields. I died pretty quickly. I reloaded and left for Next I went to the Swamp and Mines and met something like 37 monsters in one fight. Lucky I was recruiting rfs-81 and I was in a shed so had my back to something. I cleaned them out with my newly obtained arresting aria and proceeded to marten's bluff. Oh just to mention something cool, you can lure monsters into Crock's shed, and he will move to fight them. You can then run past him and clean out his chest upstairs without losing him as a shopkeeper. After marten's bluff, I teleported to the rapax rift. The good thing about doing this is that at such a low level, I did a lot of it facing only level 10 rapax patrols and archers. The bad thing is the -20 on Vi's stats really hurts at this level and I had to keep her in the back. Also, I got too far in and saw level 19 rapax samurai and warmages in the distance so promptly exited the rift before I was decimated. After all this, I finally decided to go to the umpani basecamp. Playing both sides was pretty easy at this point as I had leveled quite a bit during my travels. Also, my gadgeteer and bard were pretty awesome since I hit some of the higher level areas first and got really good instruments to play with. The djinn in covert ops was k.o.'ed by my ranger with the giant sword. I seem to have very little trouble with big bosses in this game. I eventually went to Bayjin and my gadgeteer with his all powerful omni gun k.o.'ed nessie in the very first round. My two summoned elementals promptly finished her off before I got into melee distance. When I got near Marten's crypt, the keeper of the crypt had 12 trynnie specters and 6 siege specters with him. It was one of those memorable epic battles. Nothing my hasted super elementals couldn't handle however. Also at this point, eye for an eye worked wonders. The keeper pretty much killed half his troops for me. The lava lord died in two rounds. Al-sedexus was a bit tougher but my ranger k.o.'ed her in the middle of the fight and a my gadgeteer asphixiated her templars. The rapax army was kind of tough since drazic and rodan sucked. I don't see what the hype is about them. But a couple of pandemoniums and tsunamis took care of the rapax army. I had some trouble shooting down the archers in the towers as they keep running away and hiding behind the post. Peewee I didn't even land a hit on. My two summoned elementals killed him even though he was 3 times their level. This is on normal mode too. Anyways, the rest of the game went pretty much the same way. The moral of my story seems to be that wizardry 8 rocks no matter what strange party combination you make! I had absolutely crappy equipment also. The only super item I found in this game was the zatoichi bo, all the way at the end of the game before I entered ascension peak. I did however find a record breaking 4 pairs of mantis gloves 4 chests in a row...not terribly useful. I was using ivory blade with my fighter dual diamond eyes, zatoichi with rfs 81, mauler dual stiletto with Vi, Giant sword with ranger, bloodlust with heater shield for bard (yes the sword found all the way back in arnika, with a nonmagical 3 ac shield...) vampire chain with aqua shield for one bishop, and staff of doom for the other. I suppose staff of doom is pretty good, but that's counteracted by the fact that my bishop is a lousy fighter. I swear if Ferro didn't exist in this game, I would still be using the ebon staff made by Antone and a shock rod for my fighter. But I still beat the game with very minimal reloads. I think I had one more at ascension peak when I met 6 pitfiends, 2 djinn of the clouds, and 1 soul eater. A pandemonium (7) got through and drove my entire party insane. My fighter killed my bishop in one hit and k.o.'ed my bard. My ranger crit my gadgeteer and that was pretty much the end of my party. My biggest accomplishment was a 500k+ xp battle. With 8 members in the party, that's a whole ton of xp. I think I something like 4 molten scorchers (level 34) an avalanche (29), an inferno (27), and four bitter wings (25). Half of the battles I had in Ascension Peak were tougher than the Dark Savant. What an anticlimactical ending don't you think? Okay guys thanks for your patience!
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