Wizardry 8 - Vi Domina Tricks

Jay Barnson continues his run through Wiz8 at The Rampant Coyote. Spoilers might apply:

The big quest Myles had for us (though he's talked about robbing the bank) was to rescue some girl by a crashed space ship. We had to fight off a group of Savant Guards - robots with blades on their hands. Definitely challenging, and they don't scare easily. There were also some bandits - Higardi raiders - monkeying around outside the ship that we had to fight our way through. Fortunately, they do scare fairly easily. We had to use every bit of tactics I could come up with to defeat them without losing anyone in our group (I actually took them on before bringing Myles on board).
One bummer about fights in Wizardry 8 is that the enemy can flank and surround you, but you can't really do the same to them. You can, however, dictate a lot of the terms of the fight - maneuvering with your back to a wall (or better, a corner) to limit their frontage, force them to come to you while you pelt them with ranged attacks (especially magical area-effect attacks), and use temporarily disabling spells like fear spells or sleep spells to disrupt them from attacking.

More information.

I thought Jay was familiar with RPGs. Perhaps it's the 1000+ hours talking, but I just don't understand his confusion with certain aspects of the game, particularly combat and RPCs.

The copy I got didn't come with a manual, and I've been playing it after 15-hour days at the office between 1 AM and 3 AM. The posts are, regrettably, done somewhat in haste and while I am only half-awake. But what am I confused about?

I think the manual is imho quite well-written. Maybe you should try to get one.

I found the PDF a couple of days back:

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.1002

But I can't say I've read it thoroughly yet. To Wizardry's credit, it hasn't been too hard to figure things out from past experience with other titles (especially Wiz 7) and a little bit of trial and error. Though I do worry I'm overlooking something pretty crucial.

Like that time I was halfway through X-Com before I found out you could save the game during the middle of combat…

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
The copy I got didn't come with a manual, and I've been playing it after 15-hour days at the office between 1 AM and 3 AM. The posts are, regrettably, done somewhat in haste and while I am only half-awake. But what am I confused about?

I've been enjoying them all so far, I remember the learning curve for wizardry games being similarly steep.

It's definitely giving me the desire to turn up a copy from somewhere.

Favorite Vi moment: After rescuing her on my very first play-through, getting severely pummeled in the process, I moved my party out of the ship, only to be immediately jumped by a pack of roughnecks, who proceed to slaughter my party. Only Vi survives. After the fight is over, Vi excitedly proclaims to the seven corpses, "You guys are great!"

I played with Vi Domina all the way to the end. There is some interesting dialog at the endgame if she's in your party.

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
The copy I got didn't come with a manual, and I've been playing it after 15-hour days at the office between 1 AM and 3 AM. The posts are, regrettably, done somewhat in haste and while I am only half-awake. But what am I confused about?

Sorry if I came across as an ass. I do that on occasion, but it wasn't intentional this time.

I guess the sort of thing that's getting me is that you're doing some rather advanced manuevers like class-switching (I'm not a proponent of that, FWIW), but you're also making party development decisions based on the first RPC you recruited.

The beauty of Wiz8 is that there's no "wrong" way to do it. I wouldn't presume to tell you that you were doing it "wrong" anyway, at least without being asked. I just found the dichotomy hinted at above to be very unusual to my eyes.

From your subsequent articles, it sounds like you're getting your head around the combat pretty well after some early struggles. You haven't made any comment about the use of walk/run for initiative and formation purposes, nor about changing formations. Don't know if that's narrative or manual-driven-awareness, so I'll mention it and leave the ball in your court.

I'm the resident Wiz8 fanboi for the Watch, so I'd very much like you to wildly enjoy the game. I'll offer any guidance you'd like, or keep my damn mouth shut if that's preferred. I'll even make sure to be nice about it going forward.

No worries dteowner. I was just worried that I was missing something glaringly obvious. As you can tell from my blog, I have very little shame or pride, but I don't want to embarrass myself TOO much.

I am trying to explore the game as opposed to trying to power-game my way through it, and kinda blogging my results as I go. I figure it's a great opportunity to both learn and dig at what makes "retrogaming" cool… and why I think "old school RPG" is a badge of honor, not a statement of derision.

I don't want to overlook the faults and shortcomings of these old games - there are MANY, even in the ones we consider "classics." And I want to have fun with it. But I also want to explore what makes them great - even to today's audiences.

Damn, reading this conversation is really making me want to start another play-through of Wizardy 8. The problem is that the game is waaaay too long to just start playing without having some serious time to set aside.

Originally Posted by dteowner
I guess the sort of thing that's getting me is that you're doing some rather advanced manuevers like class-switching (I'm not a proponent of that, FWIW), but you're also making party development decisions based on the first RPC you recruited.

I found that in Wizardry 8 it was better to not class switch, unlike in Wiz 7 where it was in your best intrests to class switch as many times as possible. My first attempt at Wiz 7 was brutal because I wanted to keep the character classes I had. The second and third attempts were a little easier because I started out with generic classes and switched to the higher classes later in the game. But Wiz 8 rewards you for not class switching, at least imo. It is the only wizardry game that I actually passed.

I love that Vi Domina delivers her being insulted line after you call her a lesbian, or ask her: "Are those real"

There's quite a few "special responses" like that from various NPCs and RPCs, although my mind isn't working well ATM beyond Lana (the bank teller) not liking profanity much. I seem to remember Madras having several good ones, too.

I usually killed Lana, she annoyed me!!

*edit* Remark no longer necessary …