Wizardry 8 - Designer Comments

Jay Barnson's Wiz8 articles have understandably touched on the pain of Arnika Road, so it's pretty nifty to see some comments from one of the developers, Charles Miles. Here's a sample:
People have screamed bloody murder about the Arnika road since Wizardry 8 was originally released. This is what the Arnika road was *supposed* to teach you:

• To avoid monsters by either using spells like Chameleon or by staying out of their line of sight. You could often sneak around the monsters if you were careful.
• To be smart about where you rested. If you rested in the middle of the road, monsters are much more likely to wander by see you, and ambush you while you sleep. If you rested in a hard-to-see place like behind a rock or behind the house at the T-intersection it was much easier to get a full rest in.
• To use the disposable items--potions, bombs, wands, etc.--we constantly gave you as loot.

More information.

I thought that name looked strange. It should say Charles Miles.

Brain fade. Thanks, dte.

Can't remember how many times I played this game through with different party permutations and I every time that first trip from the monastery to the main city was a huge challenge. I cursed it at the time, but it was actually a challenge that I derived much pleasure from. I just remember the sigh of relief each time I finally made it safely through the city gates. It was also nice to later be able to stroll down that highway with much more impunity with buffer characters.

All these Wiz 8 posts are getting me nostalgic. Does anyone know of a way to get Wiz 8 to run workably on a Vista machine(or can point me to a resource) ?

I'd agree with this, if your party's average level is no more than fifth level. Arnika road with a level 3-4 party is relatively easy -- so far as things go in Wiz8.

But my first time through, not knowing any better, my party was around 8th level by the time I left the monestary, and underequiped. I could handle the critters in the monestary, but modai and bandits were another matter. Hiding, sprinting, and a walkthrough is what it took for me to make it to Arnika.

Arnika Road is a different experience once you've been to Arnika and kitted up your party with equipment more suited to their level.

On another playthrough, knowing better, I held off leveling until I reached Arnika. The road was cakewalk. Until I reached Arnika and found level 21 savant berserkers roaming the streets, killing patrols in 1 or 2 hits.

Well, I definitively learned about points 1 & 2.

What I didn't like, though, was that the monsters aslways spotted my party, even when I tried to hide.

And I never knew there was a spell like "Chameleon".

I don't think I'll ever try this game again. Too much fighting for my taste.
Although I greatly enjoyed the rest of it.

Arnika Road was something of a let down after hearing people talk about it so much. It took me a few reloads, but I was expecting the game to be much more punishing. I've been considering turning the difficulty up a notch, to expert. I'm getting the urge to go play at least Wizardry 6 and 7 though, so I guess I might get my fill.

There's a random element to it. I had one run where I only had 4 battles on the entire trip to Arnika, and one of those was the bandits on that "side street". I've had some runs with 20+ battles over that same stretch of ground.

@stanza- gaming the autoleveller can be advantageous, but it sometimes blows up if you are way below the expected range for some map. You wrapped around to the bottom of the table. Supposedly the game was laid out for you to be level 7 getting to Arnika and level 10 getting to Trynton.

Hm…design, yes….whateva! I think that they went overboard - having *multiple* sets of marauding random monsters converge on you at once (happened several times) after you're tapped out from a big battle is poor design. And why should you h ave to have chameleon to survive? Predicating gameplay on such things is not good - it may force certain character combinations on you,spell choices etc. And in many cases more potent creatures are immune or hardly susceptible to the bombs etc that they provide. Fortunately I have an eagle-eyed ranger so sometime I can outrun the enemy, but often they engage you from a huge (conveniently located out of spell range) distance even if you think you're far enough away. I like the Gothic model where you have 'no go' zones with powerful creatures, but *eventually* you can kick there furry arses. Auto-scaling is crap and breaks immersion ("what do you mean a 30th level cave rat??? *SQUEAK CRUNCH* OMG - I'm a demi-god - how can a rat kill me!?"). I also (it seems) did not follow the "prescribed" route arriving in Trynton when I was about 7th level or less …. well, that seemed to be where the game wanted me to go! sheesh.

Originally Posted by dagoo7
All these Wiz 8 posts are getting me nostalgic. Does anyone know of a way to get Wiz 8 to run workably on a Vista machine(or can point me to a resource) ?

I'm running Wiz8 with no problem on Vista Home Premium 32bit. I just set the Wiz8 executable to WinXP combatibility and it runs like a charm for me… of course every machine is different so I can't guarantee you will have the same luck.

I just reinstalled and the same worked fine for me.

Saddens me to not see anything similar to wizardry 8 on the horizon.

Well there's still Duke Nukem Forever..and we do like to go on about that other one from Corwin's buddy…

Originally Posted by sherwinz28
Saddens me to not see anything similar to wizardry 8 on the horizon.

There's several indie titles that are in the same neck o' the woods (Eschalon, Age of Decadence, dare I mention Grimoire). It's not the same, but it's close and it's all we've really got.