Wizardry 8 - Old School Goes Old School

Dhruin

SasqWatch
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August 30, 2006
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The Rampant Coyote has to break out the graphing paper for this dungeon in Wiz8:
And found myself transported into a very old-school dungeon. Mind you, this is old-school as perceived by an old-school game, which is very old-school. We're talking about a 21 x 21 grid of walls forming a dungeon level here. The walls are textured, but also bear a white outline (reminiscent of the first 4 Wizardries) so you can see the grid.

One thing that came immediately to my attention was that there was no exit. I deliberately skipped reading anything in the walk-through about the dungeon beyond what I was supposed to do to get there. I stumbled along blindly, ran into some nasty spike traps, found a whole bunch of doors that were locked with some SERIOUS lock levels, and found out that the auto-map was virtually useless.

At this point I began to wonder if I shouldn't reload that saved game from before I entered the dungeon.

I decided to stick with it. And thus committed myself to about a four-hour ordeal that involved a LOT of reloading saved games from combats gone bad, and about six points of increase in my rogue-turned-bard's lockpicking ability.

The first couple of hours involved me wandering about pretty aimlessly, trying to make sense of what was appearing on the automap, unlocking doors, and getting into fights. I'd find mushroom rings which would teleport me to other locations on the map. I kept finding myself revisiting old territory in the maze, and not finding anything resembling a way out. However, old-school training eventually kicked in. I knew what had to be done.
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
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So would you advise making your way through the game till you hit a point where your stuck and "then" look to a Walkthrough for some help?

I see it as a double edged sword, not using the walkthrough I could possibly (most likely) miss some things and possibly FUBAR by group....but not using one brings the pure joy of exploring an undiscovered country ;)

Decisions, decisions....
 
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The only thing you'll miss without some spoilers are the easter egg dungeons. Chances are excellent that you won't get stuck in the game itself.
 
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I wouldn't pretend to advise anything. :) As you say, walkthroughs are a double-edged sword. Awesome when you get stuck or frustrated, but they can also deprive you of much of the challenge.
 
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
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The retro dungeons of Wizardry 8 were jawesome, and one of the things I regret not having mentioned when I did that review for the Codex. Spent a good deal of time in them and reading that article makes me want to jump back out there again :)
 
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