Hi everybody.First post, so Hello!
Now, on to the question.
I'm playing Wizardry I (the 1987 release) on my PCjr (yes, really!). I've got a nice party going now, my two fighters have an AC of -2 before spells, my priest is adept at everything up to level 5 spells, my mage also up to level 5, my bishop is handy with mage spells to level 3 and priest to level 2, and my thief rarely misses a trick. They're all level 9 or 10. Fighters have 84 and 53 hitpoints(!), priest has about 80, mage 22(!), thief about 55.
I've got down to level 5 now, but it's hard. Or rather, it's HAAAAARD. I know this game is difficult, but take what happened last night:
Trundling along the corridors in level 5, when...
5 LVL 5 MAGES
A LVL 5 MAGE CASTS MOLITO *blam*
A LVL 5 MAGE CASTS MAHALITO *blam blam* my mage dies
A LVL 5 MAGE CASTS MOLITO *blam*
A LVL 5 MAGE CASTS MOLITO *blam* my thief and bishop die
A LVL 5 MAGE CASTS MAHALITO *kerblammo* my weaker fighter dies
I actually did kill one of them, my better fighter got a palpable hit in, the rest of them were dead before they could lift a finger.
Obviously, I ran. Fast. And limped back to the castle where luckily I had enough to heal three of the characters. Of course, this being my luck, the bishop promptly got turned to ashes. Bloomin' cheap priests in temple, reckon he was on work experience.
Anyway... I've worked hard on this party getting them up to level 10. I've got a stack of 12 adventurers' corpses stacked up in the Monster Allocation Centre where they keep dying. Yet I cannot find a way to defend against breath spells and magic group-attack spells.
Is this something you just have to live with or am I missing something really important here? I've bought pretty much everything there is to buy at Boltac's, so anything else I have to find in the dungeon. I'd like to level up more but that'd take a year and a half using only level 4 creatures, and even then occasionally I get surprised by 5 gas dragons and my entire party gets flamed (bye bye mage). Is it normal for the mage to just keel over and die whenever you chance across anything that can breathe or cast spells? 'cos they have so little hitpoints!
Naturally, cheating is not an option!
It is a fun game, though, isn't it? Just soooo hard (which is a good thing!)