Quick Question About Wiz 8

roqua · December 3, 2006

Obviously they have the enemy scaling up and lvl with you system. Not only do you gain skill by placing points on level up, you gain them through use. Would it benefit me to not lvl up my characters? That way when I finally do I have much more skill for a lower level character. Does not lvling up lose skill points; lets say I stay at lvl 1, I still gain exp points towards lvl 2 in combat. But what happenes when I have enough to lvl up to 3 but am still lvl 1? Does the exp get wasted?

I could find this out myself the old fashioned way, but would rather not waste time testing when I can have someone just tell me.

HiddenX · December 3, 2006

Leveling up in Wiz 8 is the best thing you can do, because your party skills are developing better than that of leveling enemies on the long run.

Arnika road is the only location, where battles are a bit frustating.

dteowner · December 3, 2006

Yep, what HiddenX said.

roqua · December 4, 2006

HiddenX said:
Leveling up in Wiz 8 is the best thing you can do, because your party skills are developing better than that of leveling enemies on the long run.

Arnika road is the only location, where battles are a bit frustating.

I never had a problem on arnika road. I had a problem of diminishing returns later in the game. It gets to the point where I felt if I built up my skill earlier I would be much better off. I actually just rested and cast the non-combat spells over and over to raise the magic skills of all my magic using characters.

So, just to clarify: I shouldn't care about skill at any given level?

Danicek · December 4, 2006

roqua said:
I never had a problem on arnika road.

You are very lucky man (it's even hard for me to believe this...)

.

dteowner · December 4, 2006

roqua said:
So, just to clarify: I shouldn't care about skill at any given level?

Doesn't really matter too much. In general, you should be dumping your level-up points into the same 3 skills (according to class) each time. If you spread them around with a point-here-point-there technique, it could hurt in the long run.

As for where you should be at any given level, there's no hard rule. Based on my progression (which is by no means "definitive"), I'd say your key skills (usually 3 per class) should stay above 5 times your level, although you might fall a bit behind around level 5 +/- a level or two.

The biggest challenge I always had was making sure my casters actually used spells. I always seem to play RPGs with a melee mentality, even with caster characters. Don't save those spell points--cast away so you get the practice.

Stanza · December 4, 2006

The odds of random skill improvements (the learn-by-doing thing) decrease as the skill gets higher. You can only add skills points to skills below 75.

Early in the game, it's good to put points into your prime skills. Once your skills are around 20-40, you might want to start spending the points elsewhere. At that point, skills are fairly effective, and you can look to rounding out your characters. Weapon skills go up nicely on their own, simply due to the frequency of combat. Lock-picking, on the other hand, requires doing that obnoxious mini-game, so your thief/ninja/mech should always raise that skill until it's maxed out (you really don't want to set off traps that blow up all of your potions).

But this is also influenced by the difficulty setting. On normal difficulty, random skill improvements are fairly frequent, and my chars usually have several skills at 100 before they reach 20th level (sometimes much earlier). On hard difficulty, random improvements are much rarer, and you'll have to rely primarily on spending points to improve any skills at all.

roqua · December 4, 2006

So, you are saying for skills, put 3 in 3? Because I dont do that. For magic users I put 1 or 2 in the primary magic type, and 1 or 2 in each spell area (like fire, etc).

But for instance my gadgeteer-I put 3 in LP, 3 in engineer, and 1 or 2 in modern weapons, and one or 2 in ranged.

My priest I also throw one or a couple in communications.

For abilities I put 3 and two areas to max them out asasp and get the super ability. But then I have more skills I have to share the wealth with.

So with the hybrid characters, like sam and rang, when I usually ignore magic progression on level up and stick to like critical strike, the super abilties, and other skills that relate more to their primary class. So I'll spend hours casting spells and resting to try and keep magic skills at a level I think they should be. WHich is another layer of boring I'd rather remove.

Danicek, whats so hard about Arnika road? You're talking about the road that leads from the monistary to arnkia, right? I clear every nook and cranny before going to the next map and I've never had a problem with arnika road more than any other map in the game. ALl the big groups of plants and brigands are annoying, but not difficult.

Danicek · December 4, 2006

roqua said:
Danicek, whats so hard about Arnika road? You're talking about the road that leads from the monistary to arnkia, right? I clear every nook and cranny before going to the next map and I've never had a problem with arnika road more than any other map in the game. ALl the big groups of plants and brigands are annoying, but not difficult.

Yes, I'm talking about the road from monastery to Arnika. This road is famous nightmare of most Wiz8 players and is believed to be the most unbalanced part of the game. We had many threads over at RPGDot where we had to persuade beginners to get over this spot and continue playing.

magerette · December 4, 2006

roqua said:
Danicek, whats so hard about Arnika road? You're talking about the road that leads from the monistary to arnkia, right? I clear every nook and cranny before going to the next map and I've never had a problem with arnika road more than any other map in the game. ALl the big groups of plants and brigands are annoying, but not difficult.

Arnika Road difficulty seems to vary somewhat--the first time I hit it on normal, I was wiped by groups of Siges and henchman who paralized and terrorized my party into immobilty--then replaying later, I only met up with some light duty rogues, acidvines and poppies who were fairly painless. Also, this is the first real test of your characters strengths and weaknesses, and if your party balance is off a bit, it really shows up.

dteowner · December 4, 2006

roqua said:
So, you are saying for skills, put 3 in 3? Because I dont do that. For magic users I put 1 or 2 in the primary magic type, and 1 or 2 in each spell area (like fire, etc).

But for instance my gadgeteer-I put 3 in LP, 3 in engineer, and 1 or 2 in modern weapons, and one or 2 in ranged.

My priest I also throw one or a couple in communications.

For abilities I put 3 and two areas to max them out asasp and get the super ability. But then I have more skills I have to share the wealth with.

So with the hybrid characters, like sam and rang, when I usually ignore magic progression on level up and stick to like critical strike, the super abilties, and other skills that relate more to their primary class. So I'll spend hours casting spells and resting to try and keep magic skills at a level I think they should be. WHich is another layer of boring I'd rather remove.

Danicek, whats so hard about Arnika road? You're talking about the road that leads from the monistary to arnkia, right? I clear every nook and cranny before going to the next map and I've never had a problem with arnika road more than any other map in the game. ALl the big groups of plants and brigands are annoying, but not difficult.

There are some classes (ninja, gadgy that is the party's locksmith, bishop) that don't lend themselves to "3 in 3", but in general I go that way. Never put points in communication, mythology, or artifacts. Those skills will go up just fine on their own and the benefits aren't tremendous anyway. Once your hybrids get spell abilities, you've got a choice to make--casting or range weapons. You'll have a hard time emphasizing and supporting (with skill points and skill usage) both. Dumping points into the book (alch, psi, div, wiz) is far more valuable than putting points into the realm (fire, air, etc).

roqua · December 4, 2006

So what do you do for a starting mage or priest, 3 and the book, then what (before they get the super abilities). 3 in 2 relams?

I don't have the range/magic problem since none of my front line guys use ranged weapons at all. My fighter is pure melee. I can max out his str and vit pretty early so after that I used to go 2,2,1,2,2 but now I guess I'll go 3,3,3.

How do you level up hybrids? Do you put any points into magic or just stick with the super abilites and core skills. For instance, ranger. Crit strike doesn't level up as fast as ranged combat and bow skill, when I max out sense and dex I can 3 in each super ability, now have 3 points I can either put all in crit or should I put it all in his book? Or split it.

dteowner · December 4, 2006

All those can vary a little bit depending on the party build and how you want to play it, but here's some thoughts:
Mage, priest: yep
fighter: what do you do when the critters are out of melee range? Under your criteria, I'd got sword/close/shield until you get powerstrike and ironskin. Seems like I often get to 75 on sword and close about the same time powerstrike and ironskin become available, but I'd let the "super abilities" grow on their own until sword and close combat were up to 75.
ranger: I often use the ranger as my potion factory (mixing fer profit, so I can afford all those expensive spell books), so I make every effort to build his alchemy up. If you don't want the alchemy, I'd go bow, ranged, and scouting.

There was/is a site called Jandrall's Wizardry site or some such. They have some very informative character development guides there. I don't agree with them 100%, but overall they are excellent. Don't have the link here at work, but I'm sure you could Google it.

roqua · December 4, 2006

Thanks for all the info. I definitley check out the site

magerette · December 4, 2006

Link:

http://www.geocities.com/jandrall/

roqua · December 4, 2006

Thanks for the link. What sucks is that a lot of the topics link to vault board discussions and there is no more wizardry valut board.

Whar are persists? And what does this mean (listed under the weaknesses of priest)

Priests- no persist attacks; hurt all come late

Does the lack of no persists hurt all come later?

dteowner · December 4, 2006

Beats me what that's supposed to mean. Priests don't get any crowd control spells until later in the game--maybe that's what they're trying to say. I actually find that a priest makes a decent melee type if you give him an extended range weapon (bullwhip is decent early on) so he can strike without being in the front row.

Quick Question About Wiz 8

roqua

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Danicek

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Stanza

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magerette

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roqua

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