Wizardry VII - Crusaders Of The Dark Savant
 

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

This game is great. I still remember to play it around 6 years ago, looking forward impatiently to reach the point where you can finally fight the Gorrors.
They're the most difficult enemies the game has to offer and you don't need to fight them. If you still decide to do so, be prepared to spend hours and hours of dying / reloading the savegame before you may kill them. And they leave really much experience and the best treasure after their death the game has to offer, though it's always random one like everywhere in the game.
Here are the most impossible of them:
The Thing from Hell (will make you all insane and is almost impossible to hit)
The Beast of 1000 eyes (you stand almost no chance against it's spell, and it can stone you or kill you, muhahaha!)
The Fiend of 9 Worlds (he'll kill your party in about 15-20 rounds even if they're really high level)
Good luck when you reach them, but they're worth it, believe me. :sneaky:

I'll try it. never ply it before :yawn:

Looks great! FreeFreddy made a really detailed and well written review here.

I only tried this shotly on one of my friends computer, I never had it myself. I look forward to play it, as I have always thought it looks great.

Looks good, but I hate jumping into plot-heavy games midway through a series.

Is it worth tracking down the earlier games just for the story, or are they not that important? I know the review says it carries on from 6, but what about 1-5?

Looks great. If I find time I'll try and play it, not likely for a while until after I finish a few more essays and exams...Thanks FreeFreddy for all the hard work you did for us.

Wizardry 1-5 has nothing to do with Wizardry 6 and 7. These games are of their own story.
But you're right, it would be good to add Wizardry 6 - Bane of the Cosmic Forge as well, it was also good game, though the graphics in it were just EGA and therefore not that good as in Wizardry 7. But the fun is almost the same. And it's there where the story begins.

That wasn't really a hard work... I even didn't upload the game, just wrote the review, added the original worldmap that I scanned ages ago on my old Pentium 100 and added a walkthrough I found on some internet site.
And that's the thing - I cannot remember uploading this game at all. Are you sure that not someone other uploaded it?
Btw., those Gorrors will indeed be really hard. Especially Beast of 1000 Eyes and Fiend of 9 Worlds are impossible ones. Others still can be beaten with some patience and good character levels, but these two are absolutely impossible enemies.

:help:
Ok... so that is the instuckions to install which might be good enough for someone who has used this kind of progran befor... the problem is... that i have not so I have no clue what to do after downloading and installing Daemon Tools...

So could somone please give a step by step type of installasion instructions? :kosta:

Sure.

After you have installed Daemon Tools, you will see it has a small red icon placed in the bottom left part of your screen (together with your sound volume and MSN icon and so on).

Left-click on it, and you will see a small menu appearing.
Click on Device 0: [F:] No Media, and then browse through your folders until you find the ISO for the game. When you open the file through Daemon Tools, you will have mounted it.

Happy gaming!

Tanks for the help it took a while but now i'll never have trubol with this again! :Brain:

After playing the previous Wizardries I bought Wizardry 7 right away. As usual the character creation aspect and developing your guys is probably the best out of any game. The fatal flaw with Wiz 7 were the puzzles. I never understood the need for all of these puzzles, making the game unenjoyable. I know a lot of people who liked the game but there were far too many pointless Myst type elements for me. Luckily Wiz 8 was much improved.

I think Wizardry 8 is little worse than Wizardry 7. Why? Because in Wizardry 7 you could avoid unwanted encounters by saving the game and reload it when you wanted to pass without the encounter (where there wasn't a fixed, must-be encounter, but a random one).
In Wizardry 8 this doesn't help. You can save the game before you see the creeps coming up the road and when you see them, reload, but the damned things will still appear at the same time on the same place! :angry: :wall:
Not that big problem at the beginning, but when you proceed further and the encounters always have at least 12 monsters in the group and you have to battle them every time again and again, this becomes rather stupid and depressing. Therefore I gave Wizardry 8 up at the time I reached the place with that upright-going squirrels living high in the trees (whatever they might be called). And I never wanted to play it again, to be honest. But I still play Wizardry 7 once in a time. It was a lot way more original and interesting at it's time than Wizardry 8. :rolleyes:

How the heck do you mount this as an ISO when its not in ISO form..o wait...haha nevermind..my computer auto-opens ISO's with Winrar so I assumed it was a rar file.

*kicks self*

Sorry :P

I got a problem:
after opening the iso file with d-tool
i tried to run the wizardry.bat and it
says:unable to open scenario.xxx or sth
can anybody help? :max:

First of all, when you mount the ISO, it becomes a letter attached that identifies it as a drive of his own. Now run install.exe, but not in DosBox. Do that in Windows's dos-prompt. Save the options. Now you need to mount in DosBox this drive letter and run wizardry.bat again. Should work now.

Thanks for your help
xp makes it really hard to play old games
maybe its because we should buy new games
with good graphics but no plot
so you have to play ten games to get the plot of one
they also stopped the support of win98 and winMe
where some games would still run good :crazy:

nevertheless
Wizardry 8 is not bad
except the thing, that some people wont
travel with you to special places
its just a classic game with a good paint :bye: :bye:

hey, i still haven't figured how how exactly to get the whole system to work
i've

1. mounted the WIZARDRY cd as drive d:
2. run install.exe from msdos (only 2 files installed, pcfile and scenario?)
3. mounted drive d in dosbox
4. tried to run wizardry.bat in dosbox


i get the error message
"unable to open scenario.hdr"


can anybody help with this?
thanks

edit:

actually i did finally get the game to work :ok:
but now i can't figure out how to save it

i get the error message, insert savegame disc into drive c:

any help?
thanks

Do you save the game in the same directory you have the game in? If not, you also need to mount the directory where you suppose to save the games in. Actually, you can configure where to save games in the main menu or in the install.exe.

i guess the main problem is that the game saves the file, but regardless what i enter into the "filename" field the file will be saved as savegame.dbs

that's why originally i didn't think the game was saving

i suppose i could circumvent this one-savefile problem by moving the file to another folder and renaming it to what i want, then have the game create a new file, but i don't think other people have this problem?

i'm a big fan of a savegame loop so i don't risk saving something i didn't want to

thanks

Umm, could I maybe have some help installing this? I've mounted the directory, but when I try running install.exe, it just flashes open for a moment before closing... what am I doing wrong?

Did you run that in DosBox? With Windows XP there could be problems.

-__- I can't even figure out how to open it in DosBox...

You can click and drag :ok:

or drag en drop

It did help to read the intro in DosBox. And now it's working, and I'm feeling mildly stupid. But thank you for your help!

Yeah what you have to do is click on the start button then run and type in
E:\INSTALL E then it installs. By the way you might not have E:\ as the drive letter if you don't just use the one that the game is mounted on.
P.S even after I did this when I ran play.bat and an error message came up and said something like an illegal operation restart your computer and try again. Restarting didnt work and windows help didnt help at all (so what else is new). Does anyone know what to do? If they did I would be very grateful.

whoops sorry about that last post I thought that there was only one page and answered to the last post on page 1.

Oki wtf! Sorry for being stupid but, i just don´t get it! :tomato:

oki i´ve mount the game in G:
installed the 2 files.....
but when i try to play either play.bat(with DosBox) or Wizardry; "unable to open scenario.HDT"

oki WTF!

plz help :help:

Okay I got it running, through many painstaking searches. Here is what I did (I am running XP btw)

I downloaded DosBox.
And the Daemon thing for mounting.
Plus http://members.home.nl/mabus/dfend.htm to manage my games.

I installed Savant by: Start > Run > h:\install h
H being the drive I mounted the iso image on. Say it were drive e: e:\install e

Now I've got a C:\Wiz-CD\7 Folder with a couple files in it.

Now I got mad at the iso thing so I W7 to C:\W7

I opened D-Fend, which RULES, and Went to Profile > Add With Wizard

This gives you open instructions on what to do.
I'm not sure that it makes any difference, but i KNOW you can run the game from the copied and pasted C:\W7 folder. Which is where I pointed to. Use Wizardry.bat as your game exe.

After opening the game, you can turn on the sound in the in-game options.

Alt-Enter to full screen it.

If this doesn't work or you get stuck, AIM: BwalkinBrian MSN: Spicolin@hotmail.com
I'll be more than happy to save you the 5 hours I spent getting it to work.

Oh and if you can't even get that far, like I couldnt... Say you get the dreaded MS-Dos cant do blah blah because of c:\windows\system32\autoexec.nt

Use this to fix the 3 files, its a quick fix...
http://www.visualtour.com/downloads/xp_fix.exe

:ok:

how does one get past the 'go to page xxx in the manual and type in the word' part at startup?

I have an old computer so when I run this game through DOS Box it foes pretty slow so I decided to just run it normally. but it comes up with some sort of illegal operation error and tells me to consult the windows help. It didn't help. so in the error message I clicked details and it came up with this:
" The program tried to execute an invalid instruction.
Fault location 0000:01B4
Interrupts in service: None"
can anyone help me?

You need not to play the older ones, but you definitely must play this one, because this is the best RPG I've ever played !!! :ok:

One of the most enjoyable RPG's Ive played. I never fell for the story, probably because I've never tried Wizardry 6, but the character creation and levelling is brilliant. I think they have an interesting approach to combating as well.

As far as i remember, wizardry 6 was not that different...
ok, graphics & sounds are much more "modern" in w7, but basically the gameplay
remained the same...and of course, a different story.

Is Wizardry 6 available anywhere? Would love to get my hands on it and try it out!

for all those getting the cannot find error:

in Dosbox you mount your image drive (eg on mine I) as "mount I I:\" (no quotes)
and again "Mount C C:\" (again no quotes) now the game will start ok!

Hi guys :bye: ,

I played W7 on my old 386 some time ago, and it was my favourite rpg. Only the riddles were sometimes to irrational. Now I'm using DosBox, but I'm not getting good sound out of it :not_ok: : the door and monster sounds are quite bad!

Can somebody help? :help: All other games tried have proper sound on DosBox.

Thanx & cya :D

Sebi

Hello. I was just passing by and noticed this post, so I took it as a personal challenge to find it on a night that I had nothing better to do. It took me a few minutes, but I finally found a place:

http://www.oldware.net/index-page_inc-Info...JnZQ%3D%3D.html

This should take you right to Wizardry 6. If it doesn't for some reason, go to www.oldware.net, click on Liste de jeux (it's a French website), and click on page 69.

I have the same exact problem as described. Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to fix the problem. I believe that it may have something to do with the files being read-only. However, when I try to change that, it prompts access is denied.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

dosbox.conf

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount c C:\oldgames
mount D D:\ -t cdrom
C:

run daemon tools
use the iso image
do a direct copy of all the files to a dir on your hd
Maybe you should turn off read only but not sure if this did anything
go into dosbox
go into the game dir and install D
then run wizardry

worked for me

Still cant save though whatever dir i use, insert SAVE DISK

Hi, Im SisterPrincessMania from Japan! :ok:

CSD, it's great, 've played on Sega-Saturn, Playstation and PC-98.
So, for me, it will be the first time I play English-CSD.

Well, I installed CSD sucessfully and created some Characters so on, but!!!
Copy-Protection is the problem, yeah, yeah.... . :cry:

Can somebody upload English-Manual, please? :sick:

I am having problems getting Wizardry 6 to save. I have not tries Wizardry 7 yet. Can anyone help me? Thanks

With regards to the copy protection, you should find a file included in the installation which will give you the words you need to start the game (look for PASSWRDS.TXT). So, you needn't bother scouring the net for the original manual in its entirety. :D

However, I would personally suggest going here:
http://retro.icequake.net/dob/

...and nabbing Rawcopy. That'll remove this antiquated piece of copy protection so that you won't have to look up a word every time you start the game. It took me 2 years to finish Crusaders of the Dark Savant. That's one year per floppy! ...and now I'm playing around with Bane of the Cosmic Forge (thanks for the link, man!)

hmmm. I get Divide Overflow message when I try to start the thing :(

nevermind. :)

for future reference: moslo solves the "overflow" message.

Or just playing the game in DosBox. :max:

FIRST THANK`S ABANDONIA! FOR THE GAME W7 AND FOR THE HELP TO INSTALL IT!HOWEVER THE GAME IS NOT EASY AT THE BEGINNING AND MY 6*CHARAKTERS GOT ALWAYS EASY TO MEET THE SANDMAN. I SPENT SOME TIME TO CREATE A BALANCED TEAM (2*FIGHTERS + 2*PRIEST + 1*THIEF + 1*FOR THE MAGIC)THEY ALL CAN EXCHANGE THEIR PROFESION AT THE BEGINNIG BUT ALWAYS THEY GET KICKED BY SOME GURU OR WITCH. IN THIS GAME MAGIC IS WERY IMPORTANT AND HOW TO USE IT, BUT I LIKE MORE RPG WITH SWORD TO SWORD AXE TO AXE AND HIRE AND THERE SOME MAGIC TO DO THE REST! :Titan:

Hi, I've been trying to use all the advice in these posts and so far i've gotten to the same problem as a few people, i keep gettting the error about "scenario.hdr" Can anyone please tell me what is wrong here? i'd really love to be able to play CDS again it was one of my favorite games!

Aaargh.. I'm looking for the crystal map! It should be in the dane tower, be i've been there, killed the demon and magna dane, got the serpent thingy... but where is that map??? help me!

The maps "wander" around the game world as your party is not the only one that searches for the maps, but the NPC's do also. So you can find this map on some NPC again, if it's not in the Dane tower. Either you steal that item off the NPC or pay the 10.000 gold, is your choice. ;)

I have got as far as creating my 6 characters but am unable to start the game. I get no newgame menu item! Any ideas welcome.

Any way to easily get it working together with D-Fend v2? I´ve already given up on this game unless I get an easy explanation. My head is spinning from trying to mount imaginary cdroms.

this is my favorite rpg of all time. although, i have not had the chance to play wizardry 6. i would love to see it here someday. wizardry 7 has a great story, a great layout, great gameplay, it's just all around great. definitely give it a try if you haven't.

ich kann das spiel zwar installieren und auch so mehr oder weniger starten, aber nur soweit das das buch mit der aufschrift "wizardry" in der dosbox erscheint (startbildschirm?) danach passiert gar nichts mehr, was kann man dagegen tun?

Du solltest zumindest versuchen auf Englisch zu schreiben. Das ist sonst einfach unhöflich. Nicht jeder hier versteht Deutsch.

What exactly do you mean by getting it 'more or less' started? Are you getting any error messages?

sry, i didnt realize it was english here, writing too much in different languages atm.
there is no error message, its just the screen with the book "wizardry" in the dosbox (maybe the starting screen of the game?), so i think the game started, but nothing else happens then.

Strange... I'll download it and see if I can get it started.

Edit: Wait a minute: have you read this post?

yes, thats how i installed/started it.

Then you must have left something out or didn't completely follow the instructions. They are precise, and anything works for me on them. :)

i tried again with exact the commands from that post, and its still the same... do i need to change something in the vinstall.exe? all i did there was turning sound/music off.

Ill answer the following rather old post:

sebi
Posted: Dec 27 2004, 05:47 PM
Quote Post


Unregistered



Hi guys bye1.gif ,

I played W7 on my old 386 some time ago, and it was my favourite rpg. Only the riddles were sometimes to irrational. Now I'm using DosBox, but I'm not getting good sound out of it not_ok.gif : the door and monster sounds are quite bad!

Can somebody help? brain_help.gif All other games tried have proper sound on DosBox.

Thanx & cya biggrin.gif

Sebi


-----------------------------------------> go to configuration (in the main menu) and choose PC-SPEAKER for Sound Effects (oddly enough). this way i got nice soundblaster-like sound effects...

Actualy the sounds and music of Wizardry 7 are played completely without problems, and the Soundblaster emulation is very good. Just set the music to one of the Midi cards, not Soundblaster, and it sounds even better.
Maybe you set a wrong card for the sound effects. Just set it to one of the Soundblaster cards, and you should be fine. The ports for Soundblaster are: Port 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1.

Hi,

I have the same error! How can you solved it? :wall:

Thanks

Andras

I'm terrible sorry, I'm not read the all discuss in this forum :tai:

moslo??

Please explain

I can't save my game.

Every time I put in the disk like it tells me to and press "Continue" but it says disk error. :(

I'm having the problem above, and can't resolve the issue. Any help would be great.

I know it's a lame advice, but did you try running it under windows ? It worked fine for me with both XP and 98. :ph34r:

Same here, I encounter no problems on XP.

Please help, 'cause I'm feeling very stupid after having read all your posts and still can't play the da*n thing.

My pc has Win98
I' ve downloaded Daemon Tools
I've mounted (or whatever) the ISO file and it is now directory "F"
I went to the regular MS-DOS prompt and typed F:
Then typed F:CD\W7
Then typed PLAY, or DS but can't get it done. Keep geting the message: "Your program caused a divide overflow error". What the...?????????

Can someone brighter than me get me through the steps one by one? Please!!!

Here's how I got it to work successfully with WinXP under DosBox without needed to use Daemon Tools.

1) Installed DosBox.
2) Made a C:\Emu folder, which gets mounted by DosBox as c:\. Command is "Mount c c:\emu"
3) Used WinRar to extract all the files in the wiz7.iso to c:\emu\wizard~1\. Because of the way the iso is set up, a folder w7 was created within that folder, so the files are located at c:\emu\wizard~1\w7.

4) Used the old DOS 'subst' command to use that as another drive. Command is "Subst i c:\wizard~1\w7".
5) Opened DosBox, changed to the I: drive, ran the wizardry install to c:.

Game runs fine with no problems now from the batch file within the directory the install created on the 'c' drive. Just remember that the 'subst i c:\wizard~1\w7' command has to be executed before you can run Crusaders.

i got this game for graduating from elementary school when it first came out, and still haven't beaten it! I must've logged thousdands of hours, and all early 90's music reminds me of Wizardry VII. I guess idon't have much to offer in the ways of tips and tricks if im still trying, but if anyone is considering this game, its a must have

I was wondering how often everyone switched professions on this game. Here is a tentative party I was planning:

Female Ranger ->Valkyrie
Male Ranger -> Samurai
Faerie monk -> Ninja
Bard -> Thief -> Bard
Priest -> Mage or Bishop
Mage -> Priest or Bishop

I would make all these character changes when they are at level 8-12 of their original profession, except the first Bard -> Thief change, which would be made a lot earlier. Should I be looking at more character changes over the whole course of the game?

My main concerns are having as many people be able to hide in combat as possible, having as many magic users as possible, and being able to use the Cane of Corpus with the Faerie Ninja. Should I focus on other things or are any of these concerns not that important? What are people's criticisms of this plan? Is there a way to develop powerful magic users and still have them be able to hide? Is a bard's music instruments worth it? Is the Cane of Corpus worth it/accessible enough to make sure you have a Faerie Ninja?

I am just becoming acquainted with the game again after about a 10 year lay off. It was the only game I ever played as a kid and I think it is great. The farthest I have ever gotten was to New City and Munkharama with a level 12 party or so. I have another party going right now just to become acquainted with the game again, and they are all around level 7 in the New City.

Thanks for any input or ideas!

This is the best game I know. It is just so big and wonderful. I know everything about this game. Just ask me if you have any problem. E-mail address of an unregistred member deleted - sorry, that's our policy
I can also send you screenshots!!!
The best way to finish this game is:

At the beggining: Use only 1 character (faerie) who has an ability to HIDE!

Change professions regulary to get all spells and skills on 100.

Final profession is NINJA.

Best way to train and gain lots of experience is to kill brother TShober and keep returning to the Munkharama bridge to meet his ghost again and again. You can advance to level 100 in ONE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAY.

You can kill ALL!!!!! monsters in GORRORS in one blow!!!

I killed them all with a faerie ninja around 100 level in 10 minutes.

The gorrors did not take a single hit point of my character without hiding it!

HAVE FUN!!!

Jan from the Czech Republic :ok:

How to save this game?

I have the new version of dos box and I used it in the past it work with other game but not with Wizardry7.

I read the instructions in the link at the end of the review.

Downloaded Daemon.
Mounted the download.
Changed the directory to G.

When I try to put the code "mount d g:/ -t cdrom" in DosBox it give me an error message.

I did "mount g:/ -t cdrom" and it worked... not sure what im really doing ( Never done this sort of thing before ) could anyone help me?

I got trouble extracting the .iso files from the winrar archive document ( that's what I get when I download the game ).

When I extract the files from the winrar and put them in a folder there is no .iso files that comes up and I can't load anything but the winrar doc itself with the daemon tool.

Edit: Fixed my problem.

I already had a drive D ( My cdrom ) so I needed to put another letter then D in this ...

mount d g:/ -t cdrom

So instead I typed

mount e g:/ -t cdrom

Since "e" was inexistant it created the driver and allowed me to install.

All went well for about 3 days...

When I play I get this.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a398/Aramax27/bug.png

I looked in the properties of the drive I created ( Drive G ) and it's full.

What can I do to fix this?

If that parition is full, try cleaning up unneccesary junk from it.

tried to press "enter"?

You will need to run vinstall (i think that is it). From here make sure to configer it not install anything. ( i forget the actual option but nevertheless you should be able to figure it out) From here wizardry.bat should work.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spooter @ Mar 22 2006, 06:49 PM) [snapback]216408[/snapback]</div>Hi Spooter,

Well, I'll tell you how I like to play... I know everyone plays a little differently, but for what it's worth...

My current party (expert mode btw) is as follows:
Fighter -> Ninja
Monk
Bard -> Samurai
Priest -> Valkyrie -> Monk
Alchemist -> Ranger -> Valkyrie
Mage -> Bard -> Ninja (faerie)

You'll note that I have set up my party so that everyone will get the Ninjistu skill, which is probably the best skill in the game, and is really vital for some of the high-end expert mode battles and especially the Gorrors. Most of your proposed classchanges switch to upcompletementary class (in terms of magic), which is nice once you've got all the spells you want, but will otherwise slow your development. Your ranger -> valkyrie class change will, for example, get you a character who sucks at both alchemy and divinity until very late in the game. Doing priest -> valkyrie at level 10, will probably have you at 100 theology by the time you get your valkyrie back to level 10, for example (which doesn't take very long). Once you've got all the spells you want, then you can switch again to a class with different spells. As a general rule of thumb, the more class changes you do, probably the easier you will find the game, as long as you don't try to do too many people all at the same time. Completing the game without class changing, including the Gorrors, requires a very well thought out team and is quite challenging--or your will just have to level WAY too much.

I personally would never play a game without an alchemist, I think they are far superior to mages, but that's just me. In the early/middle game, all of the power spells are ones like blinding flash, sleep, confusion, silence, etc. which the mage doesn't carry much of. Sure fireball is handy, but unless you can wipe out an entire group with it, one of the spells I mentioned earlier are more useful.

I like bards a lot in the early game (esp on expert again), but they rapidly lose effectiveness as monsters become more resistant to their music.

Cane of corpus is a really nice item to have, but it isn't vital to finishing the game. If you can set your party up for it, you might as well get it, but I wouldn't worry too much if you don't have a faerie ninja. I certainly would never bother trying to roll one from scratch, for example. Unless you've already rolled yourself a faeire monk, I don't see much point in doing monk -> ninja as you've proposed, since rolling a faerie monk from scratch isn't much easier than a ninja. I think the only time I would bother to roll a faerie ninja would be if I were trying a solo game, which I've heard is possible, but have never seen any documented successful cases of.

A.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wandering User @ Oct 23 2005, 04:58 PM) [snapback]171363[/snapback]</div>I don't know where this fine gentleman may be, but I would love it if he could be a bit more clear on line five of his post here. Minding the fact that I am running Win 98 on a below average machine at my job, I can't seem to run the VINSTALL without staring at a blue screen. No text, no fun pictures. As I am new to the world of DosBox, I am looking for an answer from someone who has experience and one who could point me in the direction of slaying hoards of Ratkins and Orks instead of fighting my own ignorance. Thanks in advance. tonymb

BTW, I could not get Daemon Tools to work properly on this machine, so mounting the disc image is dead to me. thanks. tonymb

I have figured it out!!! And it wasn't a stupid mistake, it was the fact I couldn't decipher what was being said in line 5 of Wandering Guest's post. No hard feeling buddy! tonymb

I cant find a readme file anywhere that has the password for the copy protection, does anyone offhand now what they(it) is?

Well, because my comp cannot use Daemon tools, I had to get the Gold version. My party consists of: Dracon Fighter
Faerie Monk
Hobbit Thief
Human Bard
Elf Mage
Human Priest
A friend of mine which is much more experienced than me said that it's good party except for the mage. He said it's better to have an alchemist and then change his proffesion to mage.
'bout the story: I didn't play Bane of the Cosmic Forge, but after reading the manual I think that the Bane's story isn't that important to Crusaders.

To Jan from the Czech Republic: Ty seš blázen. Hrát s jednou postavou?

Hey, anyone know what the lowest possible AC a character can get without cheating?

My solo faerie monk presently has a base -28, with -35 on the head and -40 on chest and legs. That's from 100 ninjistu, 19 dex, 18 speed (class changed after going to Dame Ke-Li and haven't been back, but I don't think going to 20 gives any more AC), plus amulet of healing, light shield, necromatic helm, and black gown of death. I seem to recall that the Diamond Ring has AC -5, which I guess would bring you down to -41, but the setup wouldn't be sustainable because gown of death has health degeneration on it.

Anyone know if there's another setup that can get you lower than this?

You can't get lower than -40 AC, that's the max value one can have. Though having higher dexterity and speed still helps - it helps you to evade attacks more often and better even if the AC doesn't lower anymore. Besides, with higher dexterity and speed you hit enemies more often and more times at an attack round.

i am completely lost when it comes to getting this game to run. my friends have told me its fun. ive tried dos box alone and in sync with deaomon or how ever u say it. ive looked at numerous website to try and help me none of them have worked. when i run vinstall.exe it says please insert disk into drive a. to fix this i got d-fend to help me mount a drive as a floppy still got same response. when i looked at this forum i noticed a guy saying i need deamon so i got that. i dont have an iso with my wizardry 7 file it just have the discs contents i have checked all my preograms nothing opens iso up automatically so its not that also someone spoke of a plain install.exe that i also do not have.

can some tell me where i can download the iso of wiz or one with its complete contents ive downloaded it from numerous places same file plz hlp...

If im just being retarded plz tell me what im doin wrong and be detailed to make it easier

Run the game's internal sound configuration utility. Make sure the values you input match those in DosBox.conf (default= Sound Blaster 16 at adress 220h, IRQ 7, DMA 1).

how exactly do i run that and call me stupid but how will that fix the a drive problem i cant even install the game to worry about sound...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Sep 22 2006, 11:18 PM) [snapback]256771[/snapback]</div>Usually, the matter is about directory usage.

First you should be able to intall the game. I suggest that you copy the wizardry7 directory on your root (i.e. c:/wizardry7).
Then, you run install.bat directly from the ms-dos window (not in dosbox).
If that works, that should create a directory called wiz-cd on your hard drive.
Then you must copy that directory in your wizardry 7 directory.
Then you shoul use dosbox to mount teh wizardy7 directory as c.
then you type cd/w7
then you type play.
hope this works.
ricca

is it possible to play this game on a macintosh? i downloaded the dosbox emulator will that be enough to play on my mac?

It should be.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wandering User @ Oct 23 2005, 04:58 PM) [snapback]171363[/snapback]</div>
AHH THIS WORKED THANKS!

First, I'm Daniel, from Brazil

I'm a real fan of old RPG and strategy games, so I went to heaven when I found abandonia...

I played W7 in my old 386 a decade ago, but I never finished it... in that time my english was almost inexistent to understand those riddles (its still horrible, by the way :tomato: ) Nowadays I want to finish this game, but I don't have time to waste resolving riddles... My computer is a 500mhz, so the game is already slow in DOSBOX(i had to cut out the sounds to play it :tai: ) I just want two things:

A resolution for the dumb, one that says exactly what i have to say or do on each step, just to finish the game...

A cheat to begin the game with realy strong characters, for I don't wanna waste time in battles and evolving characters...

If you can help me, I'll be thankfull :kosta:

For a very detailled walkthrough through the game look here - DLH.NET
For a cheat (not exactly an overpowered party but something useful anyway) look here - DLH.NET
Hope it helps you.

The walkthrough is excelent, but I wasn't able to use the cheat codes... It says:

"Type in at the save menu:

BROTHER MOSER WANTS A TURBO-CHARGED DEATH SWORD

[L] - One level up for all characters
[M] - Monster ON/OFF
[x] - 50.000 experience points
[W] - No clipping mode
[i] - Teleporter
[F12] - Teleporter map
[Einf] - Ending sequence"

I didn't understand, where exactly at the save menu should I type these codes? :huh: ... what key should I use? enter, shift, ctrl...

Hope I don't look much stupid... :tomato:

Thanks anyway for the walkthroug... :ok:

hi
just wanted to make it all understandable
make a hard copy of the cd image
then in dosbox-

mount d ?:\ -t cdrom (? the name of ur cd rom drive)
mount c c:\? (? the directory where ur hiding all ur stolen abandonware games)

[goto d:]
install
[still in d:]
cd w7
play

remember to mount both the c: and d: everytime u play for ur savedgames



btw did i mention...
im the wiz im the wiz nobody can beat me im the wiz
;)


ive made my super (sic) party!!
feline samurai
faerie monk
dracon ninja
lizard ranger
gnome bard
rawulf bishop
whatcha think???

...and u think u cant be more of a greasy fanboi
XD


anyway gl and hf

Since the version of the game on this site is such a pain to run, here is a better version for everyone to download: Wizardry 7 (Just choose the free download and after few seconds you can download it).

Important - be sure to extract the game folder in the archive exactly to the root of the C drive, so you have a folder c:\dsavant after for the game to be able to find it's SCENARIO.DBS and to be able to run.
And be sure to mount in DosBox exactly like that:
mount c c:\
After that just change to dsavant folder with cd dsavant and type wizardry or wizardry.bat.
That's it, enjoy the game. When asked to type a certain word when starting a new game after adding the characters, simply press ENTER and that does it.

I just started playing w7 and I'm amazed but I can't seem to find a way to re-order the party once you begin. is that perm? set it and forget it? I kinda wanted to change class and order somewhere down the road, at least I think I do. :) yes no?

- bigperks :sos:




edit: I found this--> http://www.iosphere.net/~eric/wizardry/w7keyboard.pdf
and shift-# works to swap your characters around. nm me :)

I can install Wizardry 6 on my XP, but when I try to play it (I've tried all the play files), a black window comes up saying 'system test' and then the window shuts. No game.

What am I doing wrong?

you need dosbox to run the game on your xp. download it from the site and if you couldnt figure out how to work with it, see some walkthroughs. here for example

by the way, cd-rom mounting command is like normal mount just with parameters '-t cdrom' on the end, so "mount <virtual drive> <patch to the directory> -t cdrom"

How do i equip my party?I am at the beggining and i think they are fightning with fists?

Got it.You place equipment from inventory to the knight armor on the right.Saying if anybody has the same problem

I've got a mapmaking kit right? I found it and I don't know how to use it, ive got a mapmaking skill that i assume is supposed to work in conjuction with the kit, if so how do i equip the kit or see the maps or something?

While outside of the inventory screen, when you're looking at the world around you, click on the USE icon (a key) at the control panel below, select the character who has the mapping skill and the mapping kit in the inventory, and select the mapping kit. Then you'll see the small portion of the map around you.
The higher your mapping skill, the more detailled the displayed map will be. There's also a spell available which will display the map, not sure of the name right now.

I must be stupid
 

I've yet to get Wizardry 6 or 7 to work on my Windows XP computer..and yes I do have Dosbox.

Can someone please post detailed instructions on how to install both properly ? I just cannot seem to get either to run (i.e. either drops back to dos or get some error message about divide overflow)

Thanks
Train!

Download and try that one - Link. Don't forget to read the bottom of the review for instructions (not much to do).
Here're the DosBox commands for how to run it:
mount c c:\
c:
cd dsavant
vinstall.exe (to configure the game)
dsavant.bat

Okay, I did vinstall (and select config only - I believe that is what you are saying above)

After I did that, when I typed dsavant.bat, I get Illegal command Moslowiz
and drops back to dos. :(

If I'm suppose to install the game using vinstall, what are the 2 drives I'm suppose to use ? I don't have an floppy drives on the computer (i.e. no drive letters A or B!) ?

Also I did extract the files from that site into c:\dsavant

Thanks
Train

oops..did you mean wizardry instead of dsavant.bat ??

Seems that works (wizardry)

So now that I've got this to work (well got to main screen), guess I'll need to find the W6 thread to see how to get that to work!

Train

Scatty:

I download and extract to C:\DSAVANT

When I run vinstall, I get the config screen. If I choose CONFIG ONLY I get:
SYSTEM ERROR: UNABLE TO OPEN C:\DSAVANT\SCENARIO.HDR - Press <RETURN>

If I run wizardry.bat (not dsavant.bat b/c I'm using dosbox instead of moslo), I get the error:
SYSTEM ERROR: Unable to Load System Fonts

Any ideas?

what does your DSAVANT folder contain? (how many files and stuff)

Here's a screenshot with the info:

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3...vantqz7.th.jpg

well, http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5...7433wv6.th.jpg
i have rehosted it for you http://www.sendspace.com/file/1092zf. well, but i still recommend using the original full iso of the game from abandonia.

btw keep in mind that this abandoneer version needs to be in c:\DSAVANT even in virtual directory. so if you are mounting c:\DSAVANT to c: (i guess you are using dosbox) setup won't work cause the game will think that it's in pure C:\. you'd need to mount c: as c: (but that's not recommended so use a subdir) and then changedir to dsavant

Using your files and properly mounting worked (I was mounting c:\dsavant to D in dosbox.. doh!).

I'm still getting the error when I run vinstall, so I can't change the sound from pc speakers to soundblaster but at least I can play. Thanks!

well, make it like this:
put your game to c:\wiz\DSAVANT

in dosbox do it like
mount c: c:\wiz
cd dsavant

and install should run just fine

Yay! Fixed. Thanks all.

Just a quick note: this game is awesome. For those of you suffering from the long timesinks in-game (i.e. resting); use dosbox's "turbo" feature (default hold down alt+f12). It speeds up whatever game you're running and makes resting not so boring.

Reading this thread I have to ask one single question: Why do we not have it pre-installed?!

i'd say iso is better... and even easier to instal in my opinion. i dont know why did scatty start mentioning the preinstalled version in some directory. now noobs rather go for that cause they don;t know what isos are

You would say ISO is better, I'm for offering games as original as possible, but Abandonia goes for pre-installed downloads. And pre-installed is easier to install because the instructions look like this:

Installation Guide
1) Do nothing - it's pre-installed!

(Okay, in case of Wizardry VII and running it directly under the OS you have to cut/copy and paste the WIZ-CD directory to C:\, but I'm searching for the config spot to change this.)

well you STILL need to put in some commands in dosbox and mount your drives, not only put some stuff in to a directory. and instead of installation guide there goes dosbox guide anyways
so if you type one more or less mount d c:\w7.iso -t cdrom realy doesn't matter in my opinion

mount c [path of the game directory]
c:
play.bat

yes
d c:\w7.iso -t iso
d:
install (or something, i never tried)
before, how terrifying is that

To install:
Download Daemon Tools
Install Daemon Tools
Mount ISO

mount c c:\
mount x x:\
x:
install x


To play:
Mount ISO

mount c c:\
mount x x:\w7\
x:
play.bat

you don't need daemon tools, you can mount isos with iso parameter. and to play you don't need to mount it again, only in case you are restarting dosbox so you will never have to type both of your paragraphs at once

IMGMOUNT has, on quite a few PCs - I don't know why -, tough times with some ISOs/games, and Wizardry VII is one of them.

Btw: I found the respective config spot and successfully edited it, thanks to my little Hex Workshop v2.54. :love:
If wanted, I can prepare an easy-working pre-installed Wizardry VII, zip and supply it.

This is an excellent title. I keep an old computer with this and a few other classic titles on it at our countryhouse where we spend christmas and so on, and I've played it every year for the last 10 years or so. The only thing that bothers me a little is the diplomacypart, which to me seems a bit overrated.

"Disk Error" on save
 

Hi,

I'm completely new to this way of running old games on the computers of today.

I downloaded and ran Dosbox, downloaded Abandonia's Wizardry VII file.

Everything works great except when I try to save game I get a "Disk Error" message.

Please tell me if there is some simple thing to fix this.

Thanks

In Windows, look up the "properties" of the game folder and make sure the "read only" box is unchecked.

Map files for wizardry vii
 

I was wondering if the map files I've heard of are available somewhere?

I checked my properties and have both read and write permissions.
retried the game and still get the disk error.

Luchsen,

Read your post about a easy working pre-installed zip. That would be great as I am a really creative carpenter but a less than average computer operator.

Where can I get this if you have supply it?

Thanks for your help.

got the game to run, cant save or load a game...disk error. tried changing attribute on file,but 'read only' wont stay unchecked. would appreciate any input. thanks.

Read the top post of page 14.

Maybe W7 is best game ,
but I lost 2 days in vain to receive
System error: Unable to open Scenario.hdr ..
Well I am so angry...
Stupid devils..
I have ISO Cd- no result
I have Daemon tools - same result
I tried all above mentioned advises - same result
I am experienced gamer but here all is kaput..
angry yog:mad:

how are you actually trying to run it? what commands did you put in to dosbox? did you use dosbox at all? just explain what you did and maybe we'll be able to help

Please
 

Hi, there,

Well, let start:

1. I am using Windows XP Pro. I have Linux Mandriva 2008 also installed. My PC N 1 is 800 Mhz and fast enough for these games.
2. I am able to use also WinME and Linux on my other 3 PC's. ( And maybe I will try ME in case I am unable to start the game with XP).
3. My C: is divided to C: and D: drives for security reasons. E: is my CD/DVD combo device. F: is my Flash Memory Slot. Now I have 2 GB Flash Memory device connected. I have Floppy (A: ) device also.
4. I DL the Wizardry game from this site. This was a 5.3 MB Rar-like file , but actually is ISO file, because of fact that XP automatically read ISO files.
5. I sent this file to C:.
6. Then 2 clicks onto the file and a new directory w7 appeared in C:. Attn: The organization is as follow: C:\W7\W7 .. In the first W7 we have 7 files as follow: Install.exe -18 kb. Manual.bat – 1 kb; PW.bat – 1 kb. Readme.bat – 2 kb. Vtos.sys – 4 kb., Manual.txt – 180 kb, Passwdrs.txt – 4 kb. In the second W7 we have 241 files , totally about 5.10 MB including wizardry.bat – 4 kb; play.bat – 4 kb;vinstall.bat – 9 Kb.
7. Then I started Daemon Tools Lite (version 4.12.3). Far right down an red icon appeared-like red square with 2 white claws- the icon of Daemon Tools Lite. Nice.
8. Left mouse click onto Dtools icon shows – Device 0: [ G: ] Empty
9. Then I click with my right mouse button on Dtools icon and proceed: An window appeared- The top label was Virtual CD/DVD- ROM with arrow -> Mount image. I click on this label “Mount image”. Then select the file WizardryVII-Crusaders of the Dark Savant.iso from C: .Very fast appeared and disappeared some like ..... mount.. not sure – was very fast..
10. Now when I click with left mouse button on the Dtools icon I have new labels in the window: First -top – is “Unmount all drivers” and second down is “Device 0: [ G: ] C:\WizardryVII-Crusaders of the Dark Savant.iso -...... This is just control info to see how I proceed.
11. At the same time in My Computer menu appeared new cd-like icon named CRUSADERS (G: ) - type CD drive – 5.60 MB.
12. Then I started Command Prompt and from DOS prompt : G:\>install . Next appeared:
13. “Install <CD-ROM Drive letter> Where <CD-ROM Drive letter> is DOS Drive letter for your CD-ROM Example: INSTALL D The above tells install that your CD-ROM is D:. (My yoga remark – why D:? ) Note that no colon (“:”) is given after the drive letter on the command line.
14. Well, I write G:\> INSTALL D
15. and received error message: copying d:\w7\scenario.hdr to c:\wiz-cd\7\scenario.hdr Can't open input file.
16. I have already DOSBOX and play the game Anvil using this Box. No problem.
17. I started DOSBOX
18. Z:\> intro mount
19. then Z:\>mount g g:\w7\
20. G:
21. wizardry
22. Appeared: SYSTEM ERROR: Unable to open scenario.hdr

Well, I tried to use ==mount c c:\w7\ - same result
Yes, I created [ I did so many attempts, so now I am totally confused and dunno how I created) this famous wiz-cd\7 directory in my C: including 2 files :
PCFiles.dbs – 10 KB and
scenario.hdr - 1KB
Yes, my scenario.hdr is not Read-only attribute with.

MHO is that the error is that D: drive device.
D: is my Archive date device, a part of C: ( about 50% ~ 40GB).
I divide C: into new C: and D: to protect myself from virus attacks.

But now I am give up and ask for help.
Sry for my long explanation..No other way.

Ty all.
yoga
:notrust:

no.. the iso file is not meant to be unzipped like you did. you have to mount it as your image =)
simply mount: your virtual dosbox drive and virtual cdrom drive, reding the wizardry 7 iso you downloaded.

then go to your virtual cdrom drive in dosbox and type in install x:, where x is your virtual drive letter

then type in cd w7, dir and there search for a good excutable

if you didn't know how to manage mointing ISOs in to virtual drives, ask away, but now i'm too lazy to type it and maybe you know it=P

Thanks
 

Dear _r.u.s.s.

I would like to thank You for your kind help.
Unfortunately the result is negative, even I make my best.
Well, I will try again on my other PC with WinME.
Ty again.

Have a good time.

Thankful yoga
:D

what does it say?=P just ask what you don't know. i bet you mounted your virtual cd in wrong way. don't be afraid to ask

i just tried it and it worked for me (5 minutes)

TY
 

Hi, You are very kind.
.. Well, let drink a cup of coffee with my lovely girl and will explain again my (probably wrong) actions!
Man, today is Sunday..
A day of love, lazy sunny day , he he..
Have a good day!
Yoga

Love is only need.
:idea:

yog
 

Hi, there,
Well let start: Here my actions:

1. First I DL the file Wizardry VII (5.1MB) from this site to c:\.
2. Start Daemon Tools ( located far right down red icon) by right mouse button click on this icon; Virtual CD\DVD-ROM -> Device 0 [G:] Empty -> Mount image -> Enter -> Locate the above file Wizardry VII-Crusaders of the DarkSavant.iso, which is located in C:\-> Open
3. Now control check shows my device G: is named CRUSADERS.
4. Start\Programs\Accessories\Command Prompt
5. C:\>G: - Enter
6. G:\> install G: - Enter
7. An window appeared: “ Wizardry CD-ROM Installation” Copying “ g:\w7\scenario.hdr to c:\wiz-cd\7\scenario.hdr...Done Copying “ g:\w7\pcfile.dbs to c:\wiz-cd\7\pcfile.dbs...Done Primary installation completed.”
8. Now I start DOSBOX.
9. Z:\>intro mount – Enter
10. Z:\>mount g g:\w7\ – Enter. A text appeared: “Drive G is mounted as local directory \w7\”
11. Z:\>g: – Enter
12. G:\>wizardry – Enter
13. SYSTEM ERROR:Unable to open Scenario.hdr.

Add mount c c:\wiz-cd\ or mount c c:\wiz-cd\7\ after line 10 and before 11, not sure which of the two, try both.

We are the champions
 

Hi, there,
Yes, I did it!

Ty all, esp. Skatty and _r.u.s.s.

1.First I DL the file Wizardry VII (5.1MB) from this site to c:\.
2.Start Daemon Tools (located far right down red icon) by right mouse button click on this icon; Virtual CD\DVD-ROM -> Device 0 [G:] Empty -> Mount image -> Enter -> Locate the above file Wizardry VII-Crusaders of the DarkSavant.iso, which is located in C:\-> Open
3.Now control check shows my device G: is named CRUSADERS.
4.Start\Programs\Accessories\Command Prompt
5.C:\>G: - Enter
6.G:\> install G: - Enter
7.An window appeared: “ Wizardry CD-ROM Installation” Copying “ g:\w7\scenario.hdr to c:\wiz-cd\7\scenario.hdr...Done Copying “ g:\w7\pcfile.dbs to c:\wiz-cd\7\pcfile.dbs...Done Primary installation completed.”
8. Now I copied the directory \w7\ from my G:\>Crusaders to c:\

9.Start DOSBOX.
10.Z:>intro mount - Enter
11.Z:>mount g g:\w7\ - Enter " Drive G is mounted as local directory g:\w7\
12.Z:>mount c c:\w7\ - Enter " Drive C is mounted as local directory c:\w7\
13.Now I left Dosbox by Alt-Tab (Do not close Dosbox).
And being in Windows (My Lord told me) I simply pressed the file wizardry in C:\w7\. ..Miracle.
A nice green book appeared and the game started.[/list]Attn: I am using Windows XP Pro, SP2, Screen resolution: 800 x 600 , Color quality 32 bit, 3D RAGE PRO AGP XP video card.

@Skatty: I tried your both variants under DosBox.No results. But You inspired me to try other variants and with GOD help now yog is a proud player of Crusaders..
The game looks fantastically!

Happiest yog
:)

Glad it works now, Yoga ;)
Now _r.u.s.s., tell me again that this version of Wizardry VII is easier to install and play than the other mentioned in this thread some time ago.

Rats!
Now new barrier: " Disk Error ".
This game make me crazy, man...:).
I fall down again, crying for help.

knock down yoga.

Ok, seems it's inevitable. Download this version of Wizardry VII instead, it's definitely easier to set up and play.
Just place it in the folder c:\dsavant (necessary, game requires that) and run vinstall.exe to configure the sound and rest, that's it. If it doesn't work when you mount the folder directly, just do it like:
mount c c:\
c:
cd \dsavant
Should do it.

Yes Yes .. The winner is.. yoga of course..
 

Hi, dear Skatty,

Relax, all is OK.

Following your detailed instructions I started the game.
1. I DL the game from your site in C:\ as C:\Dsavant.
2. Then unrar /unzip/ in same dir.
3. in DBox Z:> mount c c:\dsavant\
4. C:\play
5. The game started. Then I created or used 6 champions.
6. Then Start New Game.
7. The copy protection asked me for password.
8. Some like Swords or Spells. I find in passwords file and pasted. OK
9. The game Really started and after loooooooooooog intro I visited the planet Guardia..
.. A nice sexy lady-warrior meet me ..
Then a group of monsters attacked me, but yog was not equipped his champions ( I hurry to test game and report you, that's all is OK)...

Note1: I have no need to start vinstall because the game automatically discover my sound card as Roland and I have nice music background - yes I hear even the grasshoppers in planet Guardia.
Note2: I used Password file from the other file Wizardry (of the site AB).One had to use 6 champs only! No more , no less.
Note3: The color background is nice, not like Dungeon Master when yoga is cracking his head as idiot in endless dark corridors, with no water,food and light....:notrust:
Of course its the beginning only but I noticed a Walk through in \Docs.
May I dare to put some regular questions like How to : save and so on..Y'know. ty.

(Very polite remark: With all my respect to other specialists, I repeat again, I do not want to harm anyone, and if yes, pls excuse me in advance , I will recommend Skatty way.
--Why, yoga?
yoga - No Daemon tools or Image file ,iso, problems and other pain procedures..easiest and working..
Merci.)

Skatty, my deep bow.
Have a nice day.

yoga the tester
:)

Glad I could help :)
You save in the game by clicking on the closed book icon on the top left beside the direction arrows. Before that, though, it's probably a good idea to go to the Configuration menu where you can define many options, among others the path for saving the game. Keep the default path c:\dsavant\ (it will work flawlessly when mounting drive C directly), as for the savegame name, you can also keep the default savegame.dbs.
Keep in mind though that you can save only 1 game at a time in Wizardry VII, so sometimes you might want to rename the savegame to a different one in dodgy situations where you aren't sure if you're going the right way, but you can do that simply at the save game dialog.

Deep in the Walk Trough
 

Hi, Skatty,

I am preparing now for this nice game, reading and noting carefully all important things. ( Any maps available?)

Concerning yr note for one save slot my tactic is to make a separate dir and save in all my progress save files under different names. So, if some is wrong I simply rename the relevant file - copy - paste and start over.

Greetings

yoga - on the road again
he he

Are You expert in Ultima 8 ?:laugh:

Me? Yes, I am.

Me too! U 8 is one of my Favorite in Ultima-Series besides of Ultima Online and i completed U 8 again last Month. Please ask your Question about U8 in the other Threads and not here.

Great
 

@Skatty
@Paco

Hi, mates,

It is nice to meet so competent, kind and polite Experts and Masters of RPG games in The Other side of the sky and Bodensee :)) or in this nice site.
Humble yoga is not novice in this gеnre also.
I am dedicated RPG gamer.
But my interest is not so deep as probably yours.
My targets:
To play Ultima series, MM5-6 , Wizardry and The Elder Scrolls - Arena and Daggerfall.
Well, I deserve the right to ask you some questions in above mentioned U8 in the future.
Thank You very much und vielen Dank.. :)

off/
Right now I meet serious problem in the game The Anvil of Dawn at level The Barrier - I am unable to open a final door and complete this easy level.
Rats! - 3 levels to the end only left.
Dear 5-th Horseman,
it is just small info 'bout my current condition.
I hate spam and know yr strict spam policy.
Excuse me and ty.

BTW why we not use the Chat option some days? It is so handy..

Skatty, I am let say little lazy person and I will use the preset 6 champions of Wizardry start. Hope it is no so fatal for their future development?

He he, it is very interesting where this Other Sky Side is ? :)) Joke..


Greetings from small, sunny and lovely Bulgaria.

yoga
Do YOU ever play the game series of the fantastic The Laxious Power?
:idea:

The other side of the sky is not for everyone :laugh:
As for Wizardry VII, using the preset 6 characters would be passable, but I would seriously recommend you to delete the 6 from the roster and create your own ones. The thing is, when you create characters in Wizardry VII, the rolled stat points for them can randomly range from 8 (very bad) to 24 (heavenly), or maybe it was even 28, and some more advanced characters like Ninja or Bishop can only be chosen with higher rolled amount of points, from 18 on depending on the chosen race for the character. Even the standard characters like Fighter or Cleric will benefit greatly from extra points from higher rolled pool.
The default 6 characters though only have moderate statistics, which, while being sufficient for being able to play the game, makes it harder to play the game through. Also, if I remember correctly, they're all only the basic characters. If you get a chance to choose a Samurai, for example, he might be a better choice than a Fighter because of some more advanced skills.

All right, I need help getting this working.

See, I've got Vista, and Vista just won't work with DOS games. Is there any other way to get it working? I've got D-Fend Reloaded, if that helps.

So you have D-Fend... and don't have DOSBox?

D-Fend reloaded is dosbox 'included' in the download it seems.

BTW, bobinator1992, if I understood swell, DFReloaded has a special Vista option when you install it, so that the virtual Cdrive and dosbox conf are installed in your user files, did you used that special Vista option?

And FYI: I also have Vista on another bootdisk and have no problems whatsoever to run dosbox directly, without front end.

Sorry, I forgot to mention, I do have DOSBox, version 0.72. There wasn't any special option for Vista in the installation.

http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net...#Kompabilitaet
De-install and reinstall the latest version.
Or try DGL
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=12915

Or simply learn how to work with dosbox directly in Vista.
(Not hard at all, simply use c:\users\your_name\ folders for everything, works perfect.)

Or if your harddisk is partitioned use D ...E ... F whatever, those aren't protected.

Or use an USB key.-(Dosbox runs fine from those)-.
You simply can copy-paste to-/install/run dosbox from USB key.
Use your whole USB key as virtual C, the mount line can be added under [autoexec] as:
mount c \
c:
This automount your USB key as C when double clicking on dosbox.exe IF dosbox folder is on that key.
That also makes dosbox portable, runs from any Win PC whatever the USBkey drive letter is.

Possibilities enough.

Thanks to everyone who posted steps to install this game. i had one hell of a time finally getting it up and running.

But now I have a question. Now that I have saved my progress and everything can I close DosBox? Is it possible to close DosBox down, then a few days later start it up and play the game and be able to load my game where I have left it?

The reason I'm asking this is because I've had problems weeks ago when I tried to load my savegame and was unable to do so. I decided to uninstall and reinstall all over again, and more accurately this time. Now I've spent quite a few hours on the game and I worry about my laptop automatically restarting and that I might lose all my progress if this happens.

If anyone can hlp me with this question it would help a ton!

Yes and yes.
Check if any files in the game directory are set to "Read Only". If so, disable that attribute.

Thanks to this board I finally got Crusaders to run after 7 hours of total frustration LOL..However now I have another problem..I cannot figure out how to save the game..When I click on Save & Resume I get a Disk Error Message..Can someone tell me exactly what to do to fix this problem? I had this game a long time ago and was so happy to find it here but damn its getting to the point where I am ready to give up..Thanx for any help

Which version of Wizardry 7 are you using? The one from Abandonia or the one I posted a link for few posts back?
Generally it should help if you mount not the game folder itself in DosBox but the drive C: and then switch manually to the game folder, like in this example:

mount c c:\
c:
cd dsavant
(command to run the game)

Then in the game options just write in the savegame location the name of the savegame itself, it will then be saved to and loaded from the Wizardry 7 folder.

Thanx Scatty :) I downloaded the game from your link and followed your advice..The game works great and now I am able to save..Thanx again

'divide overflow'?
 

Hi everyone.

Before I say anything, I just wanted to say thank you very much to the awesome people who go to all the effort to upload these games and making it easy for fans to get back in touch with their inner, geekier child. Secondly, I really appreciate the careful, well-written, step-by-step instructions that have been provided by other posters.

I still have on problem though. I have mounted file and done all the dosbox stuff correctly ( i know because this worked on my previous computer), but when i actually get the 'wizardry' file going, the screen rez changes fine, it's just about to start, it gets tantalisingly close and i see a brief little dos-like message in a little window that simply states 'divide overflow' or something similar, it only flashes for an instant. and then it's all over. I'm also using Windows XP and I've tried changing the compatibility to Windows 98 (hey, it worked for Wiz 8) but still nothing.

:'(

If anybody could give me some advise on this, I would be over the moon because I love this game so much, was my fav as a kid and I can seriously see myself repeatedly coming back for many years!

By the way, just in case it helps, I'm using XP Professional Verson 2002 SP3 with Intel 1.66GHz, 0.99 GB RAM

Which version of DOSBox are you using?

I've tried on 0.63, 0.70 and 0.72

Use 0.72 and change Core setting to Normal in DOSBox.conf.

Okay I've changed the core settings to normal, saved it then tried it again but same result. :S Could it be something wrong with my puter? Because I didn't have anywhere near as much trouble with my last one.

Thanks for the help so far Fifth Horseman!

I'll try to figure out what's going on.

Odd, everything works just fine without messing with the config file.

Please post the exact commands you entered in DOSBox when trying to run the game.

ah, trying to run it in dosbox would be a good idea! You gave me the clue I needed :) I mounted c:, then went cd w7 and used ds.exe and it works perfectly! You are a champion Fifth Horesman and I really appreciate your patience!

Yesterday's games seem to be much more difficult than present ones. I was killed by the first enemies I stumbled across all the time. These Ratkins aren't the most powerful menace in this game, are they? :laugh:

Any hints how to manage this laughable "obstacle"? :confused:

If you're beginner, select easy difficulty in config. See some hints in manual about PC creation. Don't make PC fighter if DS isn't fixed (e.g. with this) — bug kills. Lesson: don't choose simple way. ;) That is, instead of running straight into town, visit beginners' dungeon (fountain is better than rest, especially that one) and river bank (Skull Bones, Map), collect few items, get XP on local fauna & flora. With sensibly grown 4-5 lvl PCs and half-decent tactics you'll easily trample poor rodents.
3 casters (1/possible stack) with Sleep or at least Missile Shield are desirable (Bard with lute is best one), mass-harm spells won't hurt, but aren't needed: Samurai is available long before Death Wish. :) Just to save time of tryng spells on such target: Rattkin are agile and eat offal, so they got good resistance for Missiles and decent Poison and Paralysis.

Thank you very much, Turbo Beholder. This truly is an excellent collection of hints. Especially the bugfix was very useful.

I'm off now to give it another try. Thanks again. See ya. :)

good times!
 

i still have (and recently reinstalled) my copy of wizardry gold, so revisiting this classic brings back tons of great memories.

interestingly enough there's a japanese playstation port from 1994 with redone english voiceovers (with japanese text except for some minor menu stuff), all new cg cutscenes and totally redone interior/exterior graphics along with slightly redrawn character art. the game moves a bit quicker, but is just as challenging from what i've played. i'm guessing the only reason it was never brought to the US, was it was a bit dated visually and sony wanted to show off the 3D capabilities of the playstation.

it's too bad, as there ended up being a load of wizardry games developed in japan, including remakes of the first five games (all with an english text option for the menus)...

Because it's sold on Amazon, Wizardry VII is from now on not available for download.

We made a mistake while evaluating this games status. Download is now back up again.

Any easier way?
 

Any easier way to get this installed? I have no idea what 'mounting the C:' is or where to begin with that.

Tried one way mentioned by Scatty but it asks for the source drive and obviously I don't have that.

Any help would be great!

Well, you probably need DosBox, and that has the brief instructions on how to get things rolling.

You need to change DosBox.conf, and I think you need to use a command to get dosbox.conf to show up, in the latest version.

Mount the "C: drive" in Dosbox to a folder on your hard drive, say C:\OldGames. That is, you create a folder where you place all the old games in their own directories. Then you tell DosBox to use that folder as the C:\ drive.

In DOsbox 0.73, you need to run, or type, 'config -writeconfig localfile' to get your dosbox.conf file. Then you edit that file, with wordpad or other text editor, under the AUTOEXEC heading at the bottom.

E.G.

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount c d:\oldgames (or C:\OldGames) {wherever you have created this folder}
mount d g:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0 ioctl {wherever you have a CD drive}
c:

Nope, there's a shortcut to it in the DOSBox entry in the Start Menu. Its' actual location is somewhere in your Documents and Settings directory.

Random: This should help.

Without knowledge about "mounting the C:", you will have even greater fun with the non-pre-installed version.

:no:
XP: http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=19983
Vista: http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=19982

I found the command line 'config.com' instructions in the Read.me for dosbox 0.73. It worked for me, but I suppose there is an easier way to get it. My bad. :(

Is this game limited to VGA256? I know some games like Blood and System Shock have 'patches' to increase resolution.

This game was released as free on a CD or DVD Rom that came with a magazine, I think PC Gamer. Deus Ex and Thief are examples of other games that were released 'free' with a computer magazine.


Another recap, with this ISO file, you need Daemon-Tools Lite or better.

Daemon-Tools (DT) installs and you have access to it via your taskbar, typically where you see your time of day and volume settings among other things. DT creates a virtual drive on your hard drive and you can point it to any ISO file, in this case you need to open the Wiz7.ISO file with DT and that will give you all the files you need and it will be located on the drive letter that DT opts to use, e.g. E:\, but it could be F:\ depending on what hardware you currently have on your system...

So now, you can use My Computer to access the files that are revealed on the virtual drive. In your E:\ drive, you should see:
W7 folder/directory
INSTALL.EXE
MANUAL.BAT
MANUAL.TXT
PASSWRDS.TXT (does not have all the passwords)
PW.BAT
README.BAT
VTOC.SYS

The W7 folder contains the bulk of the game files.

I copied all of these files into the directory that contained the WIZ.ISO file that you downloaded from Abandonia. E.G. D:\OldGames\WIZVII (The directory where all of your games are located, and the directory that you mount in DosBox)

So now you need to run install.exe.

I ran it using DosBox, but some have said to run it in Command Prompt. In DosBox, install.exe creates a folder in the directory that you have mounted. For example, it creates the folder WIZ-CD\7 in your mounted drive*, e.g. D:\OldGames\WIZ_CD\7... If you use Command Prompt, it creates the folder on your C:\ Drive... It contains the files:

PCFILE.DBS
SCENARIO.HDR

*When I say mounted drive, this is the drive you create for DosBox to use, e.g. mount c d:\OldGames.

Now I have two directories in my OldGames folder... WIZVII and WIZ-CD. Using Windows, My Computer, check the properties on these folders and remove the check from the 'read-only' check box to allow you to save your game.


Now everything should be set up properly. Get back to DosBox and go to the WIZVII\W7 directory and type play, or DS, or WIZARDRY. They all worked for me. Play.bat, DS.exe, Wizardry.exe.

You can set up your game options now. Choose Sound Blaster for voices and effects, choose Roland for Music and that's about it.

May I ask why you don't simply use the imgmount command in dosbox to mount the ISO as D: ?
And install the game directly in dosbox from D: on C:
Why that complicated routine??????

Hmm, good question, :), I was following the thread from the start and I just summed up what people were doing, and I guess all that is now archaic.

So no need for Daemon-Tools anymore? DosBox will handle the iso file?

Any idea if you can play Wiz7 with a higher resolution?

Readme for DosBox, for reference-
-------------

IMGMOUNT
A utility to mount disk images and CD-ROM images in DOSBox.

IMGMOUNT DRIVE [imagefile] -t [image_type] -fs [image_format]
-size [sectorsbytesize, sectorsperhead, heads, cylinders]

imagefile
Location of the image files to mount in DOSBox. The location can
be on a mounted drive inside DOSBox, or on your real disk. It is
possible to mount CD-ROM images (ISOs or CUE/BIN) as well, if you
need CD swapping capabilities specify all images in succession.
The CDs can be swapped with CTRL-F4 at any time.

-t
The following are valid image types:
floppy: Specifies a floppy image or images. DOSBox will automatically
identify the disk geometry ( 360K, 1.2MB, 720K, 1.44MB, etc).
iso: Specifies a CD-ROM iso image. The geometry is automatic and
set for this size. This can be an iso or a cue/bin.
hdd: Specifies a harddrive image. The proper CHS geometry
must be set for this to work.

-fs
The following are valid file system formats:
iso: Specifies the ISO 9660 CD-ROM format.
fat: Specifies that the image uses the FAT file system. DOSBox will attempt
to mount this image as a drive in DOSBox and make the files
available from inside DOSBox.
none: DOSBox will make no attempt to read the file system on the disk.
This is useful if you need to format it or if you want to boot
the disk using the BOOT command. When using the "none"
filesystem, you must specify the drive number (2 or 3,
where 2 = master, 3 = slave) rather than a drive letter.
For example, to mount a 70MB image as the slave drive device,
you would type:
"imgmount 3 d:\test.img -size 512,63,16,142 -fs none"
(without the quotes) Compare this with a mount to read the
drive in DOSBox, which would read as:
"imgmount e: d:\test.img -size 512,63,16,142"

-size
The Cylinders, Heads and Sectors specification of the drive.
Required to mount hard drive images.

An example how to mount CD-ROM images:
1a. mount c /tmp
1b. imgmount d c:\myiso.iso -t iso
or (which also works):
2. imgmount d /tmp/myiso.iso -t iso

Lets keep it simple if we want to help beginners, yes?

imgmount d x:\path\name.iso -t iso

this game is too hard, they just kill my team. after one minute of playing :laugh: i found a gold cd version of this game in my treasure box so i'll keep trying ......

Hey, I was just wondering... the Journey map kit, when I 'use' it, it comes up on the screen, but as soon as I try to move, it disappears :o Is that how it's supposed to work? I thought it'd just stay up to be used. I'm using the DOS version of Wizardry VII by the way, since Wizardry Gold doesn't like 64 bit systems :(

It's not easy, but it's also not that difficult if 1) you're careful in character creation/development, and 2) watch where you're traveling. Traditionally, the Wizardry series doesn't go easy on parties that explore without preparation. Stick to low level areas, and level up as much as possible before you decide to move on.

Yes this is how the map kit works, in this game there's no map staying all the time on your screen so it's more realistic. The higher your level in mapping, the more details are shown with the map kit too, btw. It's worth increasing it.

I cannot believe this game is still being played! I love it! I had this game ages ago.

I'm new to the entire dos thing but still have the game. Can anyone point me in the right direction to get started?

Dosbox and here is some stuff you should read.

Great, thank you for the reply!

HAH I take it youve never tried to play the very first Wizardry?

You wanna talk about a game that will make you throw your monitor across the room after about 30 minutes of playtime.. Thats the king right there.
Im still playing VII (bought it new in 92 and am STILL trying to finish it) and yeah its pretty tough you just have to be careful..

Its NOTHING like the first few though. Those games were practically impossible unless you owned a character editor like WizPlus, or you used the old Bishop Identify cheats to level up your guys.. Guess thats why Ultima always won as my favorite series over Wizardry and Bards Tale back then..

Thanks dude :) I've had the Wizardry Archives disk for like 15 years now, it's an immense game series. I just had memories as a child of playing with a permanant map... I guess I was mistaken :P

I have downloaded one of the pre-installed versions on DosBox 0.73, run Vinstall and set:

Music to Roland

Sound to Soundblaster

Music sounds fine, but the effects can only be described as being ZX Spectrum quality. Last time I played this was in 1993 when it first came out, so I can't really remember the quality of the effects, but surely they are better than what I'm hearing.

The sound effects in Wizardry VII are fully digital, so their quality should be better than the PC speaker one, which would be what ZX Spectrum sound is pretty close to. Are you sure vinstall saved the settings after you quit it? Maybe it's still running with the default settings. By the way, if you don't own a Roland sound module or have Virtual Sound Canvas installed, the music won't sound correctly unter the Roland setting in DosBox as it was intended to. You would be probably better of setting music to Soundblaster too.

Hi, Scatty,

You know very well this game?

yours

yoga

Yes I know this game well, have played it many times. Why?

Maybe after U8 will start it..
Are the battles very hard?

They can be very tough if you're with the wrong level of characters too early in the wrong place. In general it's a much more strategic RPG than Ultima VIII as the battles are 1. turn-based in the game and 2. the combination of right spells available and cast + well-made, with good consideration put into them characters made at the beginning will bring you through many battles.

Hmm,

maybe Ultima Underworld 1, 2 then will try?

And wait till I grow up mentally and physically..

You know me v. well yet, helping me in:

1. Arena (so diff. game, still non finished)
2. WoX
3. now in U8

Tell me yr honest feeling is humble yoga ready for Wizardry7 ?

I will accept any of verdicts..

Merci..

Wiz7 depends a lot on game technics, unfortunately.
You need to know which class can easily change class with which requirements, to maximize HP and spell damage output. But on top of that, you also need to know certain encounters ahead of time, basically it's just easy to be won if you play as if you played the second time. (if you know what i mean... uhm, like, carrying that wooden plank because you know, that in a few lightyears this plank will make a certain encounter, at some point of the game, more easy)

Overall, not a game for me. I started it with a recommended party (from dlh.net - dirty little helper, which specializes in cheats and sureproof walkthroughs) but at some point it just became boring. I do not recomment W7 because of it's abruptness in story line, ie. sword swinging fighters who suddenly encounter aliens with laserguns) but well I admit, that to many people who know the storyline beforehand it is very appealing, albeit depending on knowledge of the entire plot.

It is sure fun for the first 7-8 levels, and I spent lots of hours enjoying it, nonetheless. Still, despite all the fun, I always had this feeling growing up my spine which told me "You should restart, and make all choices better from where you began this time"... it's a creepy feeling, well, but it's unique to Wizardry7.

I recommend to rather play Ultima Underworld 1+2 and/or one of the more recognized RPG dungeon crawlers.

I know exactly what you mean. Only I had this feeling with Wizardry 8 and quite strongly with Arcanum as it tends to get boring after some time of playing through and maxing the character level. Never with Wizardry VII though.

I would humbly advice the same for you, Yoga. From what impression I seem to have got so far about you, this game might be way too difficult and confusing for you just yet, no offense meant whatsoever. It requires a lot of careful detail being put into consideration with creating player characters at the start, reading through the manual to choose for oneself what type of mage character would be "better" / more suitable, and all kinds of strategic considerations during combats, such as weapons used, their effect etc. etc. And I mean Ultima VIII is in my opinion quite more simple than Wizardy VIII.

Yeah, simply put Wizardry 7 (and 8) is a nutbuster. And somehow I still feel that self proclaimed prodigy D.W. Bradley should go back and learn something about game design :) I'd opt for UU1-2 as well, and maybe the lightweight alternative to Wizardry, Wizards & Warriors. It's a lot easier to get into, and I had tons of fun with that.

After so competent and honest advises, the only action to do is:

Thank YOU very much, mates.

YOU save me lot of hours.

Will start UW1/2.

@Scatty, you helped me in Anvil of Dawn also..

Did I? I even never played that one yet :p Must have been long time ago, don't really remember it. But glad to have been of help.

Amen.. Im still crawling my way through the game I re-started a couple years ago (Just finished joining the Umpani army and running my errands for em)..
I remember when I bought it brand new and two days later I HAD to have my mom take me back to Software Etc to buy the clue book. I dont know how Sir-Tech ever expected anyone to get anywhere without it..

I just ran into that whole character class problem the other day and I just hit level 10 with all of my characters.. I used DSCHEAT to change my Fairie Priest into an Elf (so she can become a Valkyrie now) but even using the editor, there were still some numbers and attributes that were initially set because of my race that I couldnt change like the tiny carrying capacity a Fairie character gets (I liked the base AC it kept though hah).. Had to go through all the trouble of setting up a Virtual PC with WinXP so I could install the good old WizEdit (it wont install in a 64bit environment) and THAT one finally got it all back to normal..

This is just one of those tough old RPG's that even with using all the online help and info you can get the game is just written to be difficult.. Youll hit an encounter and get a group that absolutely lays waste to your party in 2 minutes.. Then re-load your savegame, hit the same encounter and this time its 2 lowly Vampire Rooks or something that you wipe out in 2 seconds.. Its all about how the game wants to go hehe.

Ive never played Cosmic Forge or #8 but the entire series has always been known as one of the most frustratingly difficult RPG's..

Argghhhh... I feel like ranting right now.

Before I start I think that I should list all the RPG games that I've played and liked thus far, but, whatever...

Also spoilers inside.
Really small ones, I'm still at the beginning.

I've been playing this for three days now and I think that's enough to say a few words about this infuriating game. I've managed to get to the Orkogre castle and find the king and the Murkhatos ghost (or whatever he's called) and the chest where the map was supposed to be but it's not there anymore because somebody else took it (I bet that was this Ratsputin guy) and all of this while reading some of the most cringeworthy dialogs and narration in the gaming history.

My guys are all at 10 level and have 100 skill points with the weapons they use, yet for some reason they're unable to kill ork rangers and other monsters that are as difficult as 5 levels ago. Usually the game just says "Hit!" and then there's no damage displayed so I believe the hit was delivered but it didn't get past the monster's armor. I don't know where to get better weapons. New City's black market had had a flail that I bought for 1400GP but none of my characters is skilled with this, and even when the hit is delivered I can't see any difference.
It's a good thing that I discovered that you can have infinite surplus of Savant Troopers to slaughter if you use Black Waffer on the door in the Forbidden Zone. Each group gives me 3000 - 5000XP, unless too much enemies come out at once and I need to commit seppuku and try again.

And this brings me to another topic. Is it just me or were the battles in this game designed to WASTE as much time as possible? I'm not saying that I don't like the turn based mode. I mean, there was nothing wrong with battles in Fallout games or in Blade of Destiny. But here... let me just list some stuff:

• GROUP ADVANCES! Oh yeah, this makes my rage meter go up to the Angry-Video-Game-Nerd level. You hear this ominous sound like the world is going to end and then you have to witness game sprites scrolling outside the screen and then scrolling back in. There's no way to skip this. No way at all! And sometimes when you're fighting 4 groups at once each group decides that it's their time to advance and you have to sit through all of this. Gods...
• Where's the option "repeat last moves"? Where is it? Blade of Destiny had this, why can't this game have it?
• Unskippable animations yet again.
• I don't want my characters to die because this lowers their vitality. So each time monsters kill one of my heroes I have to sit through all of the remaining animations then press run run run run run terminate game die die die die die reload never meet the same group again because previously the game just decided that you were faring too well and it's time to kill you with 24 Savant Troopers...

I realize that back then some companies were still making games for smart people, unlike today where all games end within 6 hours and are made for hu-mans who can't tell a difference between a joystick and a joypad. However I believe there's a difference between making a game for smart people and forcing folks to write down whole sentences and then make them type this sentences back at the right moment or else they're screwed. This reminds me of Ultima V where messages were coded using runes and you had to manually decipher what the message does say. I didn't play Ultima V very long either...

Other nuisances:

• I found a stash of "animal" meat. This was revealed to be Munk meat and Munk internal organs. I don't know what Sir-Tech defines to be an animal but Munks look pretty damn human to me. Disgusting.
• Gorn. Oh dear. At the same time they steal Hobbits from Tolkien and then bother to rename Orks into Gorn. Oh, and then they call their castle OrkOgre...

I've even made a screenshot to show my friend what I'm spending time on (instead of doing something useful :smile2: )
http://zalewa.dyndns.org/robert/pic/...1-04-00-98.jpg
I wouldn't recommend this game even to my worst enemies...

After all of this I just want to press the delete button on the game's directory.

Nice decision
 

Many did incl. yoga..

:hello:

You might feel better if you read this:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/564808-wi...s/review-23424

A very interesting review without spoilers.

Danke, KMONSTER,

You very kind as well.
I do not forget your valuable help in my battle with Lord Xeen and here YOU are again correct:
The review is nice analyse of the above game.

Gladly I played the game one day only..

Ty

Grateful yoga

Off -
May I very politely ask You why You was not in the forum a while?
Hope, no rude behavior.

Hallo yoga !
I visit this site and look into the forum nearly every day, but I didn't feel the urge to post recently.

I own Wizardy 7 gold with the printed manual, read it a few years ago and wanted to think about a party to create, but the game mechanics information which I'd need for developing a strategy just isn't in the big manual.
I still have the urge to try the game, but I don't want to work months doing permanent luck manipulation by reloading without knowing how the game rules work thanks to the crappy manual.

Nein, nein.

Do not work for nothing.

Follow the lazy yoga and drink 1-2 Heineken in the forthcoming hot days..

Better have a sparrow in the hand instead of eagle in the sky..

Time is geld Y'now..

:)

Greetings

yoga
now battling in Daggerfall

Slay not he that cannot hear.
Played a game not long ago, but had to give up.
I finished it years ago with 4 party members, quite playable, since the less party members u got, the faster u lvl, so I decided to play with only 3 characters, 3 Ninjas =), thinking of not having problems further with changing professions and all, but after experiencing brutal save/load orgies, when one of the charcaters fails hiding in shadows, being slain in one turn almost.
So I advice not to try it at home =) unless ur strong of will.

Keep up the good work Abandonia crew, ur the best!

3 Ninjas is not very convenient, since you need at least someone to heal and someone to be able to summon higher level monsters to aid the party. Since Clerics heal AND summon, you should also have at least one of those in the party for the first stages of the game. Later, when the Ninja has developed it's fighting skills and begins to learn Alchemist spells you should begin to invest some big points in that area, all the fighting skills will develop automatically during the fights.
Seeing it that way, it's enough to have just a double-team party of Ninja and Cleric. That way they level-up even faster than three, both can fight good enough and with Cleric you have advanced healing spells that Alchemist does not and some good attack spells too. Besides, Cleric can wear divine chain armor pieces which provide good protection and regeneration, and as he's not able to hide like Ninja does, he needs all the best stuff in the game he can wear. Also, it's a good idea to have a Fairy Ninja for the obvious advantage - Cane of Corpus. Also Fairies have better armor class than others.

Downloaded and running! If I hurry I might be able to finally beat this game before it turns 20.

I'm glad to see that people are still trying to play this flawed masterpiece. It's a bit repetitive and sometimes a real grind, but despite its limited graphics it has so much personality.

Also, thanks to everyone who posted before me asking for help on how to get it running with sound. It took some work but I finally got it all worked out.

No, thanks
 

Hi, all fens of this game,:OK:

Some years ago I started the game being so naive (me - the great gamer will finished the game for max. 30 days)
Ha ha
After 2 days I give up. Then well respected Scatty advise me (TY, good Scatty) to stop the game.
Well, maybe I have to grow up, make bigger muscles, drink fish oil (My grandma told me it is nice brain stimulator) and then with written WT near to start again.
Now I am still young and fool. And .... UW2, Daggerfall and Prince of Persia 3 are waiting...
Ha ha
My respect for Masters who finished the game..
They are Heroes!!

yoga the stupid
:ph34r:

I pretty much never heard of some1 finishing it without a WT for the first "run".

I've finally finished the game.

It's unbalanced, unfair, illogical and tedious but it doesn't require much skill. It's rather for beginners with much patience than for experts.

For combat you only have to accept that the game is unfair and will throw enemies at your party which you can't survive so you're supposed to use save/reload to manipulate the random number generator consistently until you've gained enough levels since almost everything in combat depends on levels relative to each other. Expert is easier than normal on the long run because of the extra XP you get.

For the adventuring part skill won't help you much. Some riddles just don't make sense so you'll have to use a walkthrough anyway and some require work instead of thinking, only a few are fun.

The game is quite small, World of Xeen is about four times that big, but since Wizardry 7 is so slow you'll need much longer to finish it.
The Wizardry7 developer's didn't care about giving a quality time, besides what's important for marketing they wanted to keep the player occupied as long as possible.
Therefore you have to spend a lot of time rolling your party and have to do lots of useless stuff before you're allowed to reroll after a bad roll.
The automap is slow to use, buggy and doesn't show much.
At higher levels a single spell can take up to 140 mana, regenerating the mana used for a single spell cast can take up to 280 hours average or 35 times 8 hour resting or 35 minutes real time, even walking to a mana regenerating well at the other side of the world is faster. It's not surprising that you only regenerate 4 hitpoints average during an 8 hour rest.
Skills are also made to make you waste time. You'll have to spend many hours doing stupid repetitive work in order to learn skills like swimming or mind control properly.

The story and the world are implausible and the ending (there's only one real one) disappointing. What's written about character creation in the manual is incomplete and misleading, thinking about the optimal party is fun but once you realize how overpowered class switching is you'll only think about the best party with self imposed restrictions.
The magic system with 6 different mana pools like in W6 is a great idea, only the slow regeneration hurts. The monster animations are great.

The Wizardry7 publishers were really great at marketing. They only offered little content artificially lengthened, sold "illogical and unbalanced" as "for experts" and "tedious, repetitive and slow" as "big" and got away with it.

Bravo, bravo Kmonster - Das ist sehr gut
 

:DDear Kmonster,

Congrats!!

It is a real pleasure for me to know such a good player.
(If You do not mind how days you played the game?)

I am proud to be with You and will never forget the invaluable help you provide me in Worlds of Xeen. Danke noch ein mal.

Me?

Playing UW2 - just before final battle with "The Three".

Wishing You bigger game results in forth coming year

I remains

Your

yoga from small, sunny and lovely BG.

:whistling:

Danke an Yoga den Weisen
 

Dear Yoga,

thank you for the congrats, but I don't consider finishing Wizardry as great achievement. I'm just a stupid player, you are the real wise man, you discoverd how crappy this game is and stopped playing after one day, stupid me hoped for the game to get better but it got worse and worse.

At least now I know the truth behind the Wizardry7 myths, the game isn't big or offers depth and it doesn't require skill, I won't get fooled anymore by the praises from players who aren't as wise as Yoga the great.

It took me about 5 months, I used spoilers but I didn't play all the time. The game playing time is very long, but for the wrong reasons.


Greetings from the snow in Freiburg, kmonster

NEIN, NEIN UND NEIN
 

Dear Kmonster,

Thank YOU fur die compliments.

Please be more proud and less self critical for the game Wizardry7!

Who more in AB can stand up and proudly annonce?:
-Yes, I did it. I finished W7..

No yoga, no Caro Capo, no even great Paco.
Nur well respected Master Scatty will said: Yes, I did it W7 also..

YOU are all but not stupid gamer..

We like You, of course we do..

Greetings and HNY of 2011.

I hope You will finish another difficult game(s).
:smile2:

yoga

:whistling:

The user Yoga has won the medal of best Abandonia gamer of 2010.

Compliment, the medal will be shipped to the sunny Bulgaria very soon.

Viva Italy!!!
 

:OK:

Grazie, Caro Capo, Grazie!

I think the next year YOU will be the best player and
will win the Medal of AB as Gamer.


Saluto!!

:hihihi:

yoga from sunny BG

Some infos about the game mechanics
 

Here's some information which should be in the manual but isn't:

I've attached a screenshot of the Cosmic Forge editor (doesn't work with Abandonia's version) where you can see the class and race differences. You can see about the classes

- the hit points they get at creation (add 4 HP for a fresh W7 character)
- HP gain at level up
- how much the hit chance improves at creation and at the next 19 level ups
- mana regeneration speed (the average mana regeneration in the 6 different spheres during 2 hours)
- the maximum skill points (weapon, physical, academia) they get at creation and level up (minimum is half the maximum rounded down) with average stats (10-11)
- class special features

- Characters with 16-17 vitality gain +1 HP, Characters with 18 vitality gain +2 HP and characters with only 6-7 vitality get a -1 HP penalty at creation and level up
- you get a bonus to maximum skill points at creation/level up depending on the sum of 2 stats: str+spe (weapon), vit+dex (physical), int+pie (academia). With 7-11 you get -2, with 12-17 you get -1, with 24-29 you get +1, with 30-35 you get +2, with 36+ you get +3
- carrying capacity depends on current str+str+vit (extra bonus for 16+ str)
- stamina at creation depends on str+vit+vit (extra bonus for 16+ vit)and the stamina gain at level up on str+vit

- the mana regeneration rate is set at creation, gaining levels, improving stats or switching class afterwards won't change it
- you get +1 to all 6 mana regeneration rates if pie+pie+vit = 42-50 and +2 if pie+pie+vit > 50 at creation

- fighter, ranger, lord, valkyrie, samurai, ninja, monk can get up to 4 * 1-4 swings per round
- priest, thief and bard can get up to 3 * 1-3 swings per round
- alchemist, psionic, bishop and mage can get up to 2 * 1-2 swings per round
- every class starts with 1 swing per attack and 1 attack per round, with 12+ dex they can get the maximum number of swings and with 12+ spe they can get the maximum number of attacks when they reach high enough levels
- you only get the second and fourth attack in the round with a secondary weapon (or unarmed as monk/ninja)
- you get additional attacks/swings faster with 12-17 spe/dex and much faster with 18 spe/dex
- ranged weapons don't get swings

- on the long run the level difference between the fastest and slowest levelling class will be less than 1
- most monsters do double damage versus fighters so don't take one
- monks and ninjas get a -1 AC bonus for every 10 points ninjuitsu skill and additional -1 to AC for every 2 levels (capped at -10), so they can have up to -20 bonus to AC added to their equipment, more than the best armor can offer.
- in order to be able to pick level 2,3,4,5,6,7 spells at level up you need at least 18,36,54,72,90,98 in the corresponding academic skill
- (unconfirmed from another source) For every 20 points in the academic casting skill (alchemy for alchemists, ...) you get +1 extra mana (or maybe 1d(skill/20)) to all 6 mana pools (if they're active) at level up. You also get +1 to all mana pools at level up if int+pie is 26-31 (or maybe 28-33) and +2 if int+pie is 32+
- the mana increase at level up also depends on the number of spells you know in this pool and maybe its mana regeneration rate, it's capped at 15 unless you pick a new spell in this pool, with maxed int, pie and academic skill you'll always get this 15 mana if you know at least 5 spells from this pool
- if you switch classes you only get +1 HP, +1 mana and no to bonus to hit at level up if you reach a level lower than the maximum previous level. For reaching the maximum previous level (not max prev level +1 like in AD&D dualclassing) you'll get the full benefits. So if you keep on switching a fairy between rogue and bard at level 3 often enough you'll have a better hit chance than any pure warrior class. Miss chance starts at 100 and is capped at 0.
- special abilities (like kia or poisoning) from characters or weapons only have a chance to work if the target is relatively low level compared to the attacker, this also applies the other way around
- classes don't get bonuses to their special skills, they are forced to put skill points into them at low levels (example: bards/ninjas/rangers can't put all their physical skill points into skullduggery like thieves, they are forced to put some points into music/ninjitsu/scouting)
- you can raise your artifacts skill if you find unidentified stacks of throwing wands, don't identify them and use them in combat from the inventory instead of throwing them

Now that's important information, thank you. Actually I thought Piety increases Mana regeneration, as the manual states it, but good to know how it really works.

Got it Running Thankyou!
 

Thank you so much for this clear explanation! I was having many of the difficulties reported by others and finally managed to get it working with your help. turns out I was overcomplicating the install, trying to open it as a file install.exe in either DOSBox or MSDOS just gave me a blue screen previously, didn't realise until your post it was simply enough to type "Install c"

Thankyou!!! and happy gaming!

Thank you so much for this. I've tried everything prior to your post with no success but I was up and running within minutes using your link!

You're welcome. The version on that link is actually an easier to get running one, from The Ultimate Wizardry Archives box made for easy setting up in Windows (though it is a pure Dos version), and it would be good if the one on Abandonia could get replaced with it, as long as Abandoneer is still up and running. There weren't any updates in years already, so it's a miracle it's still active.

This should be the easiest version.

Some advice for importing a game from wizardry 6
 

The game usually lets you keep one special weapon or armor piece per character, by having only one item equipped you can enforce keeping it (unless it's one that never transfers).

After importing your character stats are reduced a little randomly, the level is reduced to 5.
Miss chance is raised by 3 (max 100) for every level higher than 5 your character was independent of class. So samurais or ninjas who got it reduced by 3-6 per level up (and other fighting classes who got it reduced by 2-5) in W6 often start with better miss chance than possible for level 5 and casters like bishops who only got it reduced by 1-3 have a worse miss chance.
Miss chance is also subtracted for high levels although characters don't get miss chance reduction after level 21, so if you level a character higher in W6 he'll have worse miss chance at the start of W7.
You can improve your W7 starting miss chance a lot if you switch classes at the end of W6 and level up to level 5 before exporting. But keep in mind that switched level 5 characters have far worse attributes than created level 20 ones.

When thinking about how to export best into W7 the regeneration rate is most important, it's set at the start of W7 and never changed afterwards. You can see the regeneration rates in my previous post.
If you start W7 as mage with 17 piety and vitality you'll regenerate much faster than if you start as fighter with only 13 piety and vitality even if you switch both to samurai for for example.
Attributes are reduced on transfer, but higher is better nevertheless. Higher W6 stats grant a better chance for higher W7 starting stats and therefore higher spell regeneration.

Weapons definitely worth importing are the samurai sword and the valkyrie lance.

ok thx kmonster following your instructions i have found your post.

so basically your class mana regen base will change unless u sticked to or switched back to the class you started wiz6 with. then modified by wiz7 calculation at the start of dark savant.

eg. let's say i started wiz 6 as a priest to get class base of 2/2/3/3/2/3, but my intention was to end up as a lord. at the end of wiz 6, if i do not spin back to priest i would start wiz 7 as a lord. and be subject to the lord's base.

as you explained, have to switch after wiz 6 for the miss% thing anyway, so i guess this is not a problem. but what is the starting cap for attributes in wiz7, any chance to retain a 20? i might save ankhs obtained in wiz 6 for wiz 7 if they r exportable.

and what about hit points/stamina/mana pools for the 6 realms, i suppose there is a fixed cap on these? did u comment on these in an earlier post in this thread?

The mana regeneration rate works like you wrote. Except pie+pie+vit for the regeneration rate the stats at the start of W7 are unimportant since you can max all stats during the game easily.

There is an excellent utility for this game:
Mad gods Cosmic forge. If you have mana/life regen problems, check it out.
http://mad-god.webs.com/cosmicforge.htm

Hi,
Does anyone remember the old Wizardry 6 to 7 exporting trick, where you could somehow get access to all of your items that were validly transferable, before the game "Deletes" most of them from your inventory after the initial cutscenes? I remember Scorpia in an old CGW "hits" article (around 1991?) said something about being able to stop the game during or before a cutscene, getting access to the "unnerfed" inventory, and then dropping everything on the ground, and then picking the items up after the cutscenes finished. But this was 20 years ago and I don't remember the details, or if it required mouse input or even what keys to press....

Anyone remember?

Hi,

Thanks for some good information in this thread.

Some thoughts about choosing your team:

I see on the internet people recommend bard, but I just tried it and I think it's a mistake to have a bard on the team; you can be without endless supply of sleep spells. The bard does not get good HP or AC and is a poor academic. Better would be a pure mage.
My other issue is the alchemist that people recommend. Sure it has some great spells, but in Wiz7 it should be more of an addition to the team than a substitute for a priest or mage. I tried a combination of (lord, monk, bard, samurai, alchemist, mage) and had often shortage of healing spell.

A very good combination I found was (Lord, monk, thief->ninja, mage, priest) . The 6th character could be anything. I chose samurai and would like to try a caster like the alchemist if I play again, not only for spells, but also for other academic skills.

The later instruments help, though. I typically don't run a bard, but in final game of the series you could acquire one as an add-on to your party who was hilarious: a reptilian with the incredibly sugary voice of a Shirley Temple clone, married to a twisted blood lust. Heh. :D

Agreed. Alchemists are great, because they can't be silenced: as long as they're conscious, they can use their magical abilities. But they're not a substitute for the basics.

I'd rather have a pure bard than a pure mage in the party. Mages get faster mana regeneration and don't have to waste points for dex and cha but the difference in spell picks is only 3 levels and bards will get able to cast all mage spells including nuclear blast at the highest level during the game.
The lute helps so much during early parts of the game that you'd never catch up later. It still useful in later parts of the game and there are other bardic instruments. Bards are also decent attackers for the second row, they can have 2 attacks with 1-3 swings with the main hand weapon (fighters 2*1-4, mages only 1*1-2).
Bards get only one extra hitpoint per level up compared to mages but this does make a difference since mages get only 2-4 HP (+ 2 vit bonus max) at level up, if the character with the lowest HP in the party has over 20 percent more HP enemy mass damage spells are easier to survive.

For your priest/alchemist comparison take into account that your second party also had an additional healer, the ninja gets healing spells and reduces the need of healing since he hardly ever gets hit with the class specific low AC.

Hehe...
The later instruments are quite good, but IMO you get them too late in the game to be powerful. They become redundant instead.

I actually tried 3 different teams up to level 5-12 with a bard, but when I switched over from bard to ninja and alchemist to priest, I had much better results. For me that's proof that the sleep spell does not make up for a large portion of the game. I also now play with the team that I wrote I wanted to try (with the alchemist). With 3 casters, I've never had it so easy up to Ukpyr and Nyctalinth, on expert difficulty I might add (Murkatos ghost was a pain though).

Anyway, comparing hps of the bard and mage is a fair point, but swings is a minor issue, because the bard is more of a caster and will be busy casting spells or hiding in shadows. As a mage, the bard will also not reach it's full potential for a long while. Not only is it 3 levels behind, but receives probably half the academic points that a mage receives. Even if it's "only 3 levels" it still makes a lot of difference in the beginning of the game.

The ninja as you pointed out as another healer, will unfortunately not contribute much as a healer until very late in the game. In my current game for example, my level 10 ninja has 9 divine points (he had 6 points at level 7). Looking back at my priest at level 3, she had 20 divine points, and 60 divine points at level 6. It was 100+ at level 10. Like the bard, because the ninja is a hybrid, the academic skill points per level up seems to be halved or in this case maybe even cut in 3.

Just got the files and made a virtual drive for the iso and then installed it inside dosbox. Worked flawlessly though I got confused initially because it installs in my root which is c:\dosgames\games and not c:\ and also because there're only two files in the installation directory. Other than that, getting into the game and setting the configuration settings so I can hear the sound was a snap.

Btw, all you do is just add this to the dosbox options file:
"mount d f:\"

I set my root this way:
"mount c c:\dosgames\games -freesize 1000"

This a assumes that the iso file is already mounted on a virtual drive that's f:\.

Let me share a bit about me..

I've played jagged alliance 2 quite a bit over the years. I recommend to every gamer I meet. This was made by Sir-Tech, the same company that makes the Wizardry series of games. Loved it, great game. Awesome character personalities. Extremely detailed. It hooked me. When I saw screenshots of Wizardry 8, it was immediately recognizable as a sir-tech product.

That's what drew me to want to buy wizardry 8. But since wizardry 7 is offered here and this can give me a taste of sir-tech and its wizardry series... I checked to see whether Wizardry 7 or Wizardry Gold is being sold and I couldn't find anything online. So wouldn't that classify this as abandonware? And I noticed that the games here that're being sold are listed as "Buy it!" So I assume it's safe to download this one.

I consider myself a bit of an old timer since I'm 34. I also think of myself as hardcore in a distant sense. I love a lot of the oldies. I think as the computer software industry added to its customer base over the years it tended to spread out and become more mainstream in the process. Computers aren't just owned anymore by nerds or geeks. The money is increasingly in console games and software that runs on portables and laptops. Desktops seems to be losing ground in all of this change.

So I just spent several hours trying out this game. The story felt stretched itself thin I think. What I got from it was that a robo-man landed on a planet to recover the Cosmic Forge. In its absence, the Cosmic Lords were unable to protect the safety of the Astral Dominae. This threatens the future of the universe. So my group of adventurers just happened to be in the temple when they stumbled on this robo-man. The robo-man informs us that we're to come with him to protect the Astral Dominae on Guardia while he leaves to deliver the Cosmic Forge to the Cosmic Lords. We're to remain on Guardia in search of the Astral Dominae until he returns....

But I got confused. First of all, why us? We're just some lowly medieval adventurers on a random planet. Is the robo-man pulling a Gandalf? Gandalf, for example, put all of his hopes and the fate of middle earth on some lowly clueless hobbits and a small band of cohorts. Granted, Gandalf couldn't trust anyone with the ring except for maybe Frodo, but I always felt Gandalf had too much faith in his own judgment. Anyway, what this robo-man did reminds me of that. Second, the story didn't allow me to pause it to fully digest everything before going further. Third, the robo-man left us there on Guardia without any real parting message that would wrap up a lot of these questions. I half expected to bump into him or some note he left behind. But nothing.

I killed a few things then I stumbled on a pack of ratkin things. Lost everyone and restarted since I don't like to save & load. Then I bumped into that babe on that rocket car. It was so random. She says she's proud that the crusaders are here and I forget the rest. I kept looking at her hooters. Why doesn't she join our group so I can look at them full-time. Then she sped off and I had to shake myself because it was surreal. Yes, I did actually see that, I told myself. But, again, the game left me puzzled.

So I adventured some more. Fell asleep at those flowers a few times trying to figure out of there was a way past it. Couldn't find a way. Then I decided to go into that underground dungeon thing. Found a secret door. Then I got poisoned when I opened a chest. Lost 2 of my guys. I didn't anticipate that the purple potion was a cure poison potion. I simply drank it in the last few moments and managed to save someone. It never crossed my mind that I could have run back to that fountain and cured everyone. So anyway, I had 4 guys left. I played it safe and then I found another secret door. I opened the chest and managed to save 3 guys. The other one didn't make it to the fountain in time. So then I went down that ladder and was ambushed by 3 bug things. Lost my ranger. I had my fighter and mage left after that. I ran around a bit on the first level of the dungeon and on the surface before finally losing my mage. Realizing the game was over, I ventured over to the scary forest area where it warned me not to go. Sine I had nothing to lose I went anyway. Got killed by some glowing wasp things.

I don't like save & load gameplay. Jagged Alliance 2 really bites with respect to this, as well. For example, I managed to play on expert difficulty for a while before my 6 mercs were slaughtered by a gigantic pack of cats. There was no way for me to know about it unless I got a walkthrough. So either I loaded a old save or quit. I chose to quit. I had had many close calls in that particular game where I lost members or had almost lost them. So JA2 practically (for sane folks) forces even a longtime player to save & load. I suppose I could try the game on easy or normal but maybe that's for another time. That aside, so here I am and I noticed that the difficulty setting for Wizardry VII is ALREADY EASY! Damn, I tell myself. So how am I going to play the way I like to play then? I guess I can't. It's save & load or don't play at all.

Keep in mind that at that time save & load gameplay was normal. I think it was only the last 10 years with online gaming where people got used to dying and respawning somewhere. So trying to play a single player game that forces you (unless you're already a master of the game and know what's ahead) to save and load feels unnatural. I admit that when I was younger I ate these games up and did a lot of saving and loading. But this is 10 to 15 years later now. This is probably the biggest thing that bothers me about old games even though I love a lot of the other things - not including the frequently poor interfaces back then.

I'll probably continue to play so I can see that babe again. I think that's the only reason I'll bear with it. I like to look at boobies. Yes, I am a shallow man. It's true.

Another thing I don't like is that I have to apparently click fight or other actions every turn. Why can't it just load the previous turn and give me the option to change hte orders each time or accept the previous ones and go to the next turn? It seems to me that conbat could get very tedious this way. It's also fairly uneventful so far. Just hack/slash. I did use sleep with my mage, which made things a bit interesting. But overall the combat so far is feeling kind of stale even though it's not irritating me yet. I haven't used the automap yet. I'll have to try that.

Old games still impress me with their quality. I'm a hobbyist programmer so I always notice these things. Even these old games are a vast collection of artwork and development. It's humbling to be sure that. I think there's something to be said for games that focus less on graphics and more on content and detail elsewhere. Not all games have to be shiny or polygonal in nature. In some sense, developers get it. They sometimes deviate. Not all games have to look great. But gamers too often will focus more on the eye candy than on what's underneath all that.

You might want to try Wizardry VIII (full CD ISO downloadable in the ISO Cellar here) for that. A bit more user friendliness in combat there. Though I generally liked it less than Wizardry VII, because of almost no possibility to avoid random encounters and a very limited choice of summoned creatures through spells, unlike in Dark Savant.

No if I try VIII, I'll buy it. I'd never do anything else. I respect sir-tech too much. Besides the release date was november 2001. That's after 9/11. Too new. I'd buy it for $5.99. Like on gog.com or steam or something. Old(er) games still have value, especially the better ones.

For example, Jagged Alliance 2, made by Sir-Tech, was released in July 1999. I'd never dream of not buying that if I was somebody who didn't have it. It's a great game, really. Something like that shouldn't be abandoneware. Put it up on steam or something for ~$5.00. It runs fine on win XP, but not sure about windows 7. Those issues could be worked out by the retailer.

Still, digital downloads are never as good as a fresh CD/DVD with a clearly written manual that you can hold in the palm of your hands and read at your leisure. I miss that. You can print things, sure. But it's not as good or durable as a professionally made manual that comes prepackaged.

VII isn't that bad it's just way over the top in terms of its save & load style.

I tried my hand at it again today. Played through two games total. Of course, I never redid anything so that means whatever mishaps I suffer I deal with...

Went bad again. No luck.

The first time through things seemed to be going good. I think I even had a lvl 4 fighter. Most of my guys were about lvl 3. I was wandering in that forest and found a shoreline. There were some trees to my left and were blocking the view. It looked like there was some room between me and the water so I thought I'd move forward to get a better look. The next thing I know my group starts dying. It says they drowned. I'm hitting the back key but nothing is happening. Then my whole group is dead. I never got much of any warning. It was brutal. I decide to try another group. This time around, I think that my knowledge of the game will help me get past this stage. So for a couple hours I'm beating things again to recover. I finally get down to the lower lvl of the dungeon and feel safe because my guys are lvl 3 and 2 and that has served me well in the past down there. But then I stumbled on about 10 cachre bug things. I didn't know hard they'd be so I decided to fight them. Besides, I've never had much luck running away from anything since I usually get blocked. Well, I quickly found out I wasn't any match for them as my group starts falling one by one. I finally decide to run. Lost 1 of the 3 guys. So 2 survive but they're beaten down. I try to rest them but their health goes up too slow. I'm kind of lost at this point too. I get attacked by 2 more bugs and I limp away from it ok. But at this point I'm feeling that the game is over. And sure enough, I get attacked again when I turned left. This time I don't survive. Get hit for 17 by one of em.

This game is hard. To be honest, coming into this, I thought the complaining I saw in this thread was just whining. I've seen lots of whining about various games in my time. I hate whiners. I'm usually fairly hardcore about things. I'm not a casual gamer. So I figured that I'd just prove em wrong. But I am humbled now as I realize that I was wrong. This game is firmly entrenched in the old-style save & load (and redo) way of gameplay. I suppose I could start doing that, but I never really liked that way of playing even when it was considered normal. Sure, I did it, but as I've said, it didn't feel right. So I'm not going to do that. I like to work through the problems I suffer in a game. But so far this game has handed me my butt and killed all of my attempts.

I never thought I'd ever come close to whining. But I'm close. I'm reaching back 20 years and asking this game to not push me over the edge. But I might be asking too much.

I tried another game yesterday and here's what happened.

Maybe to dull the pain I wrote a review of my characters...

I remade them because of the things I had learned. Gave them more speed in hopes that they could run from there opponents better and tried to more appropriately allocate academic and physical skills. I also read the manual a bit and see that if one character runs then they all do so maybe I could improve my tactics by using guard or something.

Deroy, the ranger, started with high stats and high karma. Garet, the alchemist, received only 1 stat point. Piffin, the thief, comes to us with a low karma. Andoo, the priest, remarkably, will begin with just 1 karma. Tharg and Hutch are our fighters and they're average.

So Deroy is a talented man and brought up by a few of the best hunters. He doesn't hold grudges, yet he can lie and pass a smile without flinching. Garet suffered a disease in childhood and almost died, but survived to later enter into apprenticeship with the alchemists. Piffin killed a man while in a drunken argument, but it was a while ago, in a deep crypt, and the guy was a nobody. Nonetheless, Piffin still feels guilty to this day and anything that makes him think of it makes his hands slippery and his mouth thirsty for some liquor. Andoo was caught in a bitter rivalry during his time as a student with the priests. He sabotaged his rival and cheated in an examination to earn the approval of his teachers. He's not proud of it, but fiercely defends his priesthood. Deep inside, he's shamed. Hutch and Tharg were watchmen in a little known city and come as friends.

Only minutes after I started I am attacked by slow of those glowing moths. I think I can do em. In the first few moves we're confident and do some damage. But a chance attack by one of the moths kills my alchemist. What's so disagreeable about it was that the alchemist was the 6th person. What's worse than bad luck is no luck at all. I am not sure if I had any of my guys set to guard or not. Garet can't take even a punch. We win the fight and come out with 500 experience.

I ran around and whacked things for a few levels. Tried (and failed) to disarm the two chests in the top level of the dungeon. Then I went back to the forest to find the chest that's near the water. To my fortune, Piffin, the thief, disarms the chest. This is the first time I've disarmed a trap with a thief. I find there there's a map kit and give that to Deroy. I use it and he draws us a sketch of the area, so for the first time I use the map feature. I wish there was a hotkey for "Use Previous".

By this time, most of us are lvl 4. I decide to go to that gate on the lower floor of the dungeon to explore what or who this ra pet sa ku mah is (sorry I think I mispelled its name). I push the lever and the gate opens. I walk inside and am assailed by two black birds and a named ghoul or skeleton creature. We take care of them but with some wounds. We're feeling good. We see a chest at the far end of the room. We somberly walk over to the place, wary of danger. Don't ask me why, but I couldn't seem to find a position where we could disarm or open the trap. It looked like we had to go in the puddle of water to access it. That's how it appeared to us at that time. So I moved us forward into that strip of water and, again, I see my group drowning. I click on the back button, unsure of whether it will work because last time I hit my back key several times with no effect. This time it works but only 1 guy is remaining: Hutch. He's a fighter. He also just happens to have 10 swimming, the highest in the group. That's probably why he survived.

Feeling defeated but not done, I leave the room and try to get up to the upper floor of the dungoen to get him healed. It's a long ways to get there so I am nervous. We get attacked, of course. He survives, barely. So I'm down there quite a ways from the ladder and not feeling good about our chances. We got attacked a couple more times but he was quick enough to run away from the fight. Finally, we found the ladder and got him healed at the shrine thing. After that we adventured all over that entrance area. I took him down to the lower level of the dungeon a few times too. I got him to lvl 5 with about 5000 experience needed for lvl 6. I was growing anxious and bored with it. So we proudly marched back down to the room where the party killed the ghoul and this time with the intent of getting a better look. Seeing nothing out of order, I, in a last ditch effort to keep myself interested, have Hutch open the chest. He's not a thief so I know he's going to get hurt. It says he's hit by a Guardian trap. Never seen that one. A demon manifests but we're unable to see it. It smashes him for 19 and then its final blow was something bigger and it crushed the life out of Hutch. He fell to the floor in a bloody mess. The apparition or invisible force set off by the trap smiled at his corpse. Hutch's dream of saving his friends faded with him as death took him.

I finished the game just now.

So I failed again. I don't want anybody to tell me what I'm doing wrong. This is probably one of the more difficult games I've ever played. I did Albion and it wasn't this bad. But back then I may have used save & load, so maybe my judgment of its difficulty is off. I refuse to let this game win, but I am severely disappointed in its extreme dependency on save & load gameplay.

I've only played in the beginner area so far, but I have to mostly agree with you, unfortunately. When I first read your posts, I hadn't played yet. I assumed you were a whiner that shouldn't be playing old(er) games. In hindsight, I am ashamed that I was so prejudice. However, I haven't given up on the game yet. I still want to see more of the content. I can forgive slow and even some repetitive gameplay, but it's the unbalanced and illogical part that gets me. The unbalanced enemy encounters and the unfriendly progression is not the way to win over a gamer like me. I hate handouts. I hate easy games. But this game is too messy to be categorized as a hard game.

What do I mean by messy? Well look at how the game handles the random encounters. It will throw stuff at you that you can't do. And there're times when even running won't save you. This is not difficult, this is unbalanced. Difficulty is what happens when you have to juggle all of the skills and abilities of your party with the various weaknesses and strengths of your enemy. Doing it well requires skill and knowledge of how the game works. Difficulty rewards people who're smart and resourceful. But if you cannot win an encounter and even running is futile then smartness and skill are worthless. If they're worthless then it's not difficult anymore. It's something else!

Something similar is when a game won't warn you when you're going to do something that will kill you. Like walking onto an invisible floor and falling two floors to be met by creatures that outmatch you. That's unnecessary. If the game has a method to handle death even when all of your group members die it might be considered ok. But overdoing these kinds of things only makes a player feel like they're battling the game, not the things inside. When the game becomes your enemy it's no longer fun. Ideally, you slowly grow a player in such a way that they will be met by overwhelming odds only in the smallest of circumstances and with warning. You add just enough challenge to keep them interested and learning. This balance was not met in Wizardry VII. This game kills you too much and exploits your ignorance too. It makes itself the enemy.

This does not mean powerful foes that can crush you with one blow should be abolished from games. It just means that mechanics have to be in place to make the player feel in control of his or her destiny. If the powerful becomes the controller of destiny then the player is no longer playing. The powerful foe is the player then and this just will cause endless grief for the real player.

In other words, sending the player to the floor can help them to grow in small doses. It gives them something to shoot for. Winning is so much sweet if you've lost a few. You have to feel like your enemy is worth killing and is worthy of the fight. But if you're doing it flagrantly then you're only just destroying their spirit. You take them out of the game and lose their trust.

It reminds me of that buzzer the joker had hidden in his palm when he shook hands with his victims. He laughed as they were burnt by the jolts. That's what happens when you mislead a player and kill them when they're not looking. They're not immersed in your game anymore.

The "joy" buzzer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_buzzer

I imagine the joker laughing as a player stumbles through an invisible wall and falls to their death. Then he says, "Now you know not to do that! Fun to learn, ain't it! Hahaahhahhaa!"

Learning ain't fun when the lesson randomly ZAPS! you. In fact, research I've seen was done on mice that showed this to be true. They actually zapped them randomly via a small device attached to their feet. Later study showed that they became addicted to repetitive behavior and were less responsive to stimuli. Examinations of their brain also showed shrinkage. It was specifically in the area of the brain related to goal-directed behavior. One area of the brain did grow and this area is tied to habitual behaviors. In human studies, it has been shown that long-term exposure to cortisol (stress hormone) leads to shrinkage of the hippocampus - learning and memory.

Well, some very long posts, and only one question - why do you keep bashing your head against the wall? The wall is much sturdier than your head. Might be just the wiser one and go around it instead.

First level characters are beginners. Absolutely laymen. Can't expect them moving mountains without any experience. Skills at levels of around 2-4 are a loong way less efficient from skill level 100. You also instantly drown with a swimming skill below 10. Just like in real life. Only takes a bit longer in the latter, and a bit more painful.
By saving the game before the "firmly set" encounters on specific spots in the game, you have a chance of getting 1-2 opponents instead of 1-6 groups with 1-8 opponents. The battles are much easier to master at that position.
Oh, right, you don't want to save and load games as a matter of principle. But then you prefer to bash your head against the wall. And are missing on lots of fun. Maybe you like to be a martyr.

Some, if not most, of these older RPGs used instant death and death traps as a way to extend game play. Save scumming was a fair tactic to get past traps meant to catch the unaware or the new, or even for people not in the mood for being smacked over the head for playing the game.

If they didn't want you to use the tactic they could have easily made save quit the game, like some older RPGs did, so don't feel bad about doing it. Otherwise as Scatty said you are just going to be bashing your head against a wall designed to break peoples heads.

Thanks for replying DarthHelmet86 and Scatty.

I tried another game yesterday.

Same group of guys, same classes.

I started with the same guys. Went over to the brickroad. I didn't intend to win. I was kind of frustrated from my previous losses. So I went there at lvl 1 to see if the ratkins would swarm me. However, this time only 4 ambushed me. I lost the fight, but I gained some useful knowledge.

So I made a new game and re-rolled my characters.

I think one of them got 0 stats, the alchemist. Anyway.

I felt excited somewhat now that I knew the brick-road was something I might be able to cross. But I chose to take things easy and level up in the entrance areas first to ensure I can survive the brick-road ambush.

Only a few minutes after starting I got attacked by 4 ratkin bandit things. I lost 4 of my group members. But the important thing is I kept my ranger and priest. I worked the dungeon and the forest with them until I was lvl 5. I opened the chests too. I did not try that ghoul.

This is the point where I went back to the brickroad. 6 rat bandits approached from the trees and attacked. I used the cherry bomb potion on the priest to hit them all in one go. Since the ranger was out of arrows he had been using his sword for a while. He could hit twice by that time. The cherry bomb killed 3 or 4 of them. I won the fight and finally had a smile on my face.

I went to the end of the road and saw the New City sign. This didn't surprise me because I had a parchment referring to it. The imperial guard asked me what my business was. The first time I said I needed rest and provisions. That failed. The second time I told him I was going to Paluke's Armory. It was just a random idea. The guard said that the destination was confirmed and allowed me to pass. The whole thing felt strange to me. But aside from that I went into the city and saw some homes or shops. Wasn't sure if they were homes or shops. I saw one building and tried to enter. The door opened and I innocently went inside, not sure yet whether it was a business or not.

At this point 4 guards attacked me. I am not sure exactly how this happened. Maybe htey attack you when you enter a random home? But the door wasn't locked. Maybe I entered a guard house? Why didn't they at least allow me to explain myself and/or leave? All that aside, I did manage to kill them, but I did run several times. It was close. A few minutes after healing up I exited the crime scene and found Paluke's Armory just next door. Talked with him. Didn't buy anything.

I wandered a bit until I was in a grass filled place with a outhouse or something. I walked next to it to see it more clearly. It looked harmless to me. Just then 4 munks attacked me. I told my 2 guys to run, but it was no good. The munks outmatched me by a good margin. I died and wondered why they were so aggressive. What're they hiding? And wth did I do wrong?

So that's the end of that group.

You guys are right that this game requires you to save & load to play it unless you're a master of the game or have a walk-through. But even so, I don't remember Albion being this bad.

There was a time I played save & load games routinely. But I must have grown out of it. Too many online games. I just can't play that way anymore. It doesn't feel right to me.

I really feel that a evolution in single player RPGs is going to happen as a result of these online games. Save & Load (Save & Redo) as a mechanic is going to change to a more fluid gameplay where death is not necessarily the end of the game and a world wherein encounters are more flexible and anticipated. I don't think surprise will be eliminated from games, but I do think that mortal surprises (that result in death) will become much less frequent. IMHO.

I thank the advice. This is a learning experience for me and I value it a lot.

I may yet try another save game or even grab a walk-through for VII. Despite how I feel about this game and other old(er) games, I still think that the content in there shouldn't be forgotten. I'm humbled by the sum of stories and images and sounds in these games. It almost makes me cry it's so beautiful and at the same time tragic (that they slowly fade from popular use and memory).

PS: My constant references to Save & Load is better rephrased as Save & Redo.

Tried another game and got my group to lvl 5 and to another forest adjacent to New City. But my luck ended there. My priest got poisoned and just before I was going to move a cure poison potion we got an encounter. We ran from it and ran into another one with 5 jelly's that killed us.

I never rerolled any of the stats for my characters or used a walk-through or redid a saved game or used any character editors. However, after dying repeatedly and seeing how this game operates, I'd warn anybody who isn't a save & redo junkie to at least re-roll stats until you get +15 or greater and also to consider a walk-through or a character editor if they're available. Otherwise, as others say, you're bashing your head against a wall that's made to crack skulls.

The primary concern I have of walking into the game with overpowered characters is that since 90% of the encounters are doable without any cheating or re-rolling or re-doing, the game would simply become a grind wherein 90% of the time you're clicking and clicking and clicking with no challenge present. The outdated interface makes it much worse. But it's the balance which produces the challenge that matters most to me. I like challenge. I like it when hit-points are low and I have to figure out a strategy. But to have that level of challenge and not to overkill is what makes great games great. It's a balancing act that not everyone achieves. Wizardry VII falls short (if not far) of this goal. But it has an excuse because it's 20 years old. But it still must be said.

Well it's age is not a much weighting excuse for game, if you ask me. There're for example Ultima Underworld - Stygian Abyss and it's successor, Ultima Underworld - Labyrinth of Worlds. Made more or less just 1 year later, if not at the same time, as Wizardry VII, those two games have IMO much more dense game story, better graphics, great music, better everything, seeing as they're in the same "3D" view perspective.
There're also others, like Betrayal at Krondor, Eye of the Beholder, Might & Magic III, Moonstone - A Hard Days Knight... you can count on and on. They're not always better graphics-wise (Betrayal at Krondor), but each one of them is more than a worthy competitor to Crusaders of the Dark Savant while being also from 20 to 18 years old. Of course relying on saving & loading too, almost all games did back then anyway, though not to such extreme extent as this one.

As was said in some post earlier in this thread, Wizardry VII simply didn't receive that much content into it as some other RPGs did, but the people behind it were good at marketing.

Kinda looking for a hint here-I am in the forest north of Ukpyr-on a scouting mission to find T'Rang. I'm taking my time and clearing the forest as I go. I just found an area with these 4 big brown stone structures and I can't find anything about them in the hint book. I'm trying to build up experience points and there are some really tough encounters. I was just wondering if there is anything here I need to be aware of? Thanks!

Big brown stone structures? You've probably wandered into the mountain area, if you mean kinda stone-looking walls that's them. If you're on the lookout for the T'Rang spies then you went too far off, try searching back closer to Ukpyr. You should find them just at one of the single road spots.

May I kindly advise You to ask for help one of the best master of these games - Kmonster.
HE can help You, I am sure.
Hmm from some time he is not here every day - sadly. :(
He is working now maybe.

Master Scatty is nice adviser also.

Thanks-haven't been on in a while. But, have been playing the game. In Nyctalinth now. Had a cursed staff, but it was really cool. I gave it to my priest, and its special power was completely replenishing all his magic. It was wonderfull having unlimited cure poison, and heal wound spells, so I didn't even care that it was cursed. I have a remove curse scroll so I figured if I didn't like it, I would just use that. But, I guess I used it up, because I was just walking along and suddenly noticed that he no longer had it! Now, does that happen with all cursed items? Do they suddenly just disappear or does that only happen when they have a special power and you use it a number of times?

All items that have a special power that can be used, have only a limited number of charges of it. When it gets used up, the item disappears completely, so it's a good idea to keep at least one charge if it's a good weapon for example, that you don't want to lose. Otherwise it's gone forever.

It didn't have any numbers next to it, so I didn't know how many charges it had. I do have a number of wands with only 1's next to them that I am holding onto until I get offered a recharge spell. My group are all around level 12, so I don't know when that spell gets offered. But, I will just hold onto them until then so I can recharge them.

The wands you can equip and throw in combat aren't rechargeable, the number shows the number of wands you have, not the charges.

Recharging items to 99 charges and selling them afterwards can yield a lot of money.

Thank-you so much for that tip!! I thought it was the other way around. I wish I had known that before Sunday! I have my game saved twice and I periodically update the 2nd one so if I screw up big time I can go back to that version and not have to go too far back and I updated it Sunday after I go the map from Nyctalinth. This was after I used up the other staff! Well, now I know better! Thanks!

Hi!

I have some serious problems with the passwords. I like to play the german version which i own originally. Unfortunately i miss the manual. The wizman.hlp is not readable with win 7 prof 64Bit. MS KB Artikel brings no solution. Is there a german .pdf manual or the password list i found some years ago in the internets. But not today.

the link to help (http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index...=0&#entry44074) seems not to work.

Help would be nice.

regards

Try http://www.mightandmagicworld.de/php...ic.php?t=11810

:D
This game is my target many years.

But i read in Net so terrible things that i still think it is veeeeeeeeeeeery hard.

No, now is time to stand up and face Wizardry 7.
Maybe i will fall down dead but will fall with dead of the millions heroes.
Very soon i will start the game.

Off
Now i am playing the game Newerwinter nights. Nice RPG.

But preparation of W7 will start asap.

Very polite Q:
Maybe starting W7 is not bright idea?
Maybe W6 is better for brave?

Danke Sehr!

:-)

that's it. thx

Wizardry 6-7-8 is a trilogy, during which you can import the very same party. So I'd call that challenge:ouch:

Not sure about Wizardry VI, the EGA 16 colors were a little bit scarce and did put me off back then when I tried to get into it, to be honest.
But as for Wizardry 7 - if you managed to stay alive at the last stages of Dungeon Master 2 you should do just fine with W7. It's no more difficult than DM2, however it's huge and quests/quest items span across the entire world so it's easy to get lost without knowing where to go next.

Funny thing as a sidenote - when browsing ages ago through the executable of Wizardry VI I noticed it has an entry of vga.drv in it, which isn't among the actual game files. Copying the vga.drv file from Wizardry VII over and renaming it to ega.drv (since Wizardry VI doesn't offer VGA graphics at setup) crashed the game, however it's theoretically possible that it was considered at one stage to have VGA graphics in Wizardry 6, and dropped when before it came out.

The moment of truth for brave
 

:whistling:

Friends, i do not hurry.
Ja, Ja.
After the advise of clever Capo i started Neverwind Nights. Nice RPG game.
But Wizardry is the real challenge for me.
I will not be the brave if i ignore this nice saga.

OK, I DL both Wiz 6 and 7.

Wizardry 6-7-8 is a trilogy, during which you can import the very same party. So I'd call that challenge
Dear twillight,
being stupid heretic i will start with Wiz 7.
Excuse me.

Dear Master Scatty,
Ich will gewinnen.
Well, DM2 is hard game. Especially when terrible minions appeared.
As You know my tactic against these hard opps was to create my counter minions in advance and have relative security.
I will do my best to win Wiz 7.
I know the road of brave to victory is very difficult.
But this is my doom.
With kind help of You and GOD i hope i will win.
:hihihi:

OFF
yoga the brave is proud to note he is 6 years already member of the nice AB.
I remember even the famous Kosta, i am here when Paco the Great was not born..
Naturlich.
:palm:

Now we will see is the brave real gamer or stupid braggart?
ha ha ha

Good luck Yoga :)

Did you already decide how you are going to play the game ?

Do you install the cheats for better rolls at creation and faster spell regeneration or play the original way ?
Are you going to switch classes ?
Are you going to abuse save/reload at level up ?

Dont listen to this guy yoga, dont do it :|

Stuck
 

I don't know if anyone can even help with this. I recently got a new computer (laptop). Had to reinstall the game and start over because the old file wouldn't transfer. No problem with that-the problem I am having is I can't find any keys for New City. I have never had such a problem getting keys before. Usually I get attacked by Rats, they drop keys and I can use them. This time though, I haven't gotten a single key. So, most of the door s in New City are locked and I can't pick them because they only flash red-no green or yellow even. I have tried a knock-knock spell a couple of times, but its a newly learned spell, so I can only do a level 1 on it. I have started going through the forest hoping to get attacked and hopefully get some keys, but otherwise I am stuck. Anyone have any ideas at all?

Those rattkins drop the keys only occasionally, something at a 10-20% chance, so it's random and certainly not guaranteed. What you should have done was to save in New City before entering a building with a set fight encounter, load until you get a fight with a rattkin party and load after the battle if there was no drop.

It's all not obligatory though, you don't really need those keys, at higher levels in Skulduggery you should be able to pick those doors in New City which require the Iron, Pewter, Silver and Gold keys from rattkins.
You can even pick most locks with medium levels in Skulduggery. What helps a lot with that as I noticed, if you play the game in DosBox, is to keep a finger at the Pause and End keys on the keyboard while attempting to pick a lock. Since the tumblers are changing numbers and color all the time, press Pause and see if any of them is green. If it is, click with the mouse on the green tumbler button, hold it pressed and quickly press the End key. This should unfreeze the game and the tumbler will be pressed at green color. If no tumbler is at green, press End and press Pause again once they changed. Keep doing this until you get a green tumbler.
This can be especially useful in the later stages in the game with chests with really good content, where even with 100% of Skulduggery the tumblers in locks will be changing too quickly to have anything more than a random chance of success.

I never used any keys for those doors since the skullduggery skill doesn't improve this way. Return when you've gained a few levels and your skullduggery skill gets higher. Just don't jam the locks while your skill is still too low, save before trying the lock and if it doesn't work reload from before your first try and go elsewhere.

[quote=kmonster;447764]I never used any keys for those doors since the skullduggery skill doesn't improve this way. Return when you've gained a few levels and your skullduggery skill gets higher. Just don't jam the locks while your skill is still too low, save before trying the lock and if it doesn't work reload from before your first try and go elsewhere.[/QUO


Yes, I try to remember to always save before trying a door! Once you've been killed a few times for not remembering, it gets easier! Since I didn't see any green on the tumblers, I didn't even try the lock because I was afraid that I would jam it, so I just tried the knock-knock and if that didn't work, I just moved on. I might try that "pause,end" that was suggested. Thats a really good idea! Its just frustrating because I don't ever recall having this much trouble in New City before. The setting is at Med-maybe before it was on easy and I just didn't realize it! I'll just go as far north as I can before that gorn General stops me and then make my way back. I'll see how many levels I can get that way. Thanks for the tips!

I just wanted to ask if the version on this site is Wizardry Gold? Because I seem to have the diplomacy bug.

I'm in New City and want to buy some weapons at Arms of Argus. So I walk into the store, then cast "Charm" on Rossarian to get a better reaction. Then I use my Bishop (diplomacy ~10), choosing the "truce" option. I get the message "Rossarian appears pleased". However, then it's back to the same screen; I still only have the options truce, bribe, force available. Am I right in suspecting that I should have gotten the "trade" option by now? :(

No, it's a normal version of Wizardry 7. Wizardry Gold is much larger, something like 40MB or more.
It's also not a bug you're describing, it happened all the time to me, too. Sometimes it requires more than one attempt of negotiating before things go up (or down to fight), especially at low Diplomacy skill. Just start another negotiation again until it comes to a result.
Charm only helps a bit, it doesn't guarantee a positive result.

Ah thx. It confused me a bit that it's an .iso the manual is a windows .hlp file. XD

Yeah, it's one a bit awkward to use version of Wizardry VII. If you have any trouble installing or playing it, there was a link somewhere on previous pages by Paco, I think, to an easier-to-use version of it. Or you can download this version from The Ultimate Wizardry Archives box, it's also quite easy to use (details are at the bottom of it's review) - Link.

Hey, talk about coincidence. While waiting for an answer I really downloaded the abandoneer version and played it up to about the same point. And it's sort of... different. So it's from the Wizardry Archives, I thought it was the floppy version.

Things I have noticed about the Abandonia .iso (compared to the Archives version):

- It runs fast. I had to set DosBox down to 2000 CPU cycles, and still the text was very fast. The Archives version I run at 8000 cycles, and that's just about right.

- The sound was off (well the volume). I really had to fiddle around with the settings (setting music to very quiet, sounds to very loud, turning up speaker volume). Everything ok in the Archives version.

- It's easy to roll high scores. I got 22 points on every 5th-6th try. In the Archives version, I have rolled for two hours and haven't seen 22 points a single time yet.

- It's easy (maybe has something to do with the above). I steamrolled through the game, now with an identical party in the Archives I have a much harder time. Hitting enemies is more difficult, and they hit you more often. In the Abandonia version, on level 5, I slapped Savant Guards and Gorns left and right. Now I have to be much more careful.

- Spells never backfire. The only thing that happened in the Abandonia version was fizzling, but spells never backfired (I didn't even know they could). Now in the Archives version, spells have backfired a number of times.


I think I'll keep playing the Archives version as it seems to be more consistently challenging (Wiz7 is supposed to be hard for a new party, right?)

Wow, that ISO version sounds like a very easy one. I never played it, so I always thought Wizardry VII is as it is with the Archives version. I had also many years ago Wizardry VII bought in a box on more than one floppy (don't remember now how many), it was pretty much the same as the Archives version. Lost it later, hence why I bought The Ultimate Wizardry Archives after that.

Are you sure you played both versions on the same difficulty? Easy and Hard play quite a difference as far as I know, you can set it in the options.
If it was on the same difficulty I wonder what kind of version that ISO might be. Pretty interesting.
Though rolling highs at 20 and more IS supposed to happen very rarely no matter the difficulty, so there might be something wrong with it.

The difficulty was the first thing I checked when I noticed I hit/ penetrate very rarely, but it's set to "normal" in both cases. BTW both versions show version number 1.20, so they're both patched.

Yeah, it definitely seems to happen too often with the .iso. The thing is it's a fresh install, not an archive, otherwise I would have said they probably applied the "algorithm fix" from the Cosmic Forge Editor that allows you to roll high scores more often.

That doesn't mean much, you can take the game files, modify the files and then put them into an ISO.
Just downloaded the archive from Abandonia and checked the ISO, it seems there are some installation files, together with text file manual, included in the ISO and the game itself is in a sub-folder, so it might be some, tampered with, version after all.
I know for a fact of a hacked "1M edition" version of Neverwinter Nights that includes all Premium Modules, during special installation, being playable without any internet connection (they did require it originally), as an example, so things like that can be done.

Got a question about level scaling in this game,

does level scaling only apply to random encounters, or to set encounters (like the Rattkin ambush outside of New City) as well? I'm asking because I grinded my way up to level 7 in New City, then tried to go to Munkharama (in search of some better weapons!!), but I kept running into encounters with like 15 "floaters" who roasted my party in two rounds. Did I shoot myself in the foot with leveling up too early, with no good equipment? I'm still using my starting equipment, only for the priest I got a shiny morning star from the shop.

To answer your question, there is technically no level scaling, only higher number of monsters on higher difficulty. For example, you'll still encounter Demented Monks in New City even with level 70.
In different areas of the game though, there're certain ranges of monsters which can be encountered. Some are more rare than others, those are usually stronger, too. On the road from New City to Munkharama, for example, you already encounter stronger monsters than on the road from the starting location to New City. Those floaters you encountered are actually among the most (if not THE most) dangerous there since they poison and almost never miss with their shot tentacles, so no wonder they tore you to pieces.
If you manage to meet 1 group of like 4-5 and defeat them, they give a very high (for your level) amount of experience though. Enough to maybe even rise a level for everyone. Missile Shield (I think it's called that) helps a lot there.

I've decided to delay Munkharama and go to the Gorn castle instead. Maybe there I'll get some better weapons :suspicious:

The fact that no good gear is being sold in New City really hurts the game if you import a new party. I think it's a difference if you start with chain/plate and a 20 damage weapon than wearing cloth armor and whacking things with quarterstaffs (even if, as I've heard, you start in a harder area).

In Wizardry 8, getting to Arnika is a real milestone because you can upgrade your gear in a way that lasts easily until mid-game. Ok there's the "money cheat" with Alchemy so you can buy plate for everyone right away, but there's no perfect game, it seems. :mhh:

Random observation of the day... when you start breaking into houses, you also start provoking a lot more random encounters.

My party hadn't picked any locks in New City until level 8. By then I'd wondered why I never saw any rattkin, I had run into lots of them in my last game. But now after I've fought with rattkins in the houses, they start appearing. Also lots of Savant Guards. Just another random fact about this multi-faceted game; I think I love and hate it. :OK: :palm: :mhh:

There will be good gear in New City, however it starts to appear after you've been a while in the game already. Important to notice is that it doesn't depend on how much you've explored the game world, but rather on how much time has passed. So after many battles, when you've rest many times, the stock in New City shops begins to upgrade to better.
Theoretically, you could rest, for the full 8 hours, something like 40-50 times in a row (if you manage to survive it without being hit by random encounters, which is very unlikely), however I wouldn't advise that. NPC's in the game make their efforts to get possession of the Map pieces which otherwise would be lying in their origin places which are covered by walkthroughs, so you'd have to kill those NPC's, steal the maps from them or trade (10.000 gold each). Also NPC's battle each other, so you might end up with only 4-5 NPC's survived from something like 15 (or more) which are in-game from the start on. Not a good thing.

Just explore the game normally and don't save on resting, and don't forget to return to New City once in a while (you'll have to from time to time, anyway), you'll have better things to buy yet.

Hmm, I thought I had rested quite a bit. I rest after every 2nd battle because I'm running out of magic fast (for the very reason that my equipment sucks). I will have to check the stores in New City after I'm done with the Gorn castle. Also it is as I expected: looking at a gameplay video someone encountered 6 Gorn Lancers in a square where I had encountered 6 Gorn Lancers and 18 Gorn Rangers arranged in 4 groups. :huh: So next time I'll want to keep my level down until I get some better equipment.

Not quite found so far by searching so I have a question to anyone who knows the game well *glances at Kmonster* - if switching classes, like for example from Mage to Ninja at level 1 then at level 10 to Samurai, do ALL those levels (1 Mage, 10 Ninja, 10 Samurai, 21 together) count for the CharLevel < -- > MonsterLevel comparison when affecting the probability of a weapon's special effect to be set off?
It makes me wonder because after all this switching, when the Samurai reaches level 10 it is displayed that he has level 10, which would be hardly beneficial for a weapon's special if he fights with level 20 enemies. If only the current level counts for the probability of the special to effect an enemy, than single-classed characters might have a big advantage in the game, compared to switching classes, after all single-classed characters get higher (visible) levels.
Looking at the Game Info in the Cosmic Forge editor right now but don't seem to find any info on that in there.

Also another question I have is about Class + Racial resistances of characters. Does class switching:
- add up to previous resistances? or
- change previous resistances to current class? or
- retain fixed resistances set at the first class at creation?

Any detailed info on that would be very appreciated :)

In the Wiz6 thread, kmonster told me that resistances are always current class base + current class level modifier + racial modifier.

I'm still stumbling around in the Gorn castle, but with a walkthrough. I really can't stand any more crap combat I provoke by walking around.

One more mechanics question: when you knock out an enemy (i.e. by Sleep), if they awaken in the same round (i.e. by getting hit), sometimes they get a turn at the end of the round, and sometimes none. This seems to be consistent, i.e. it doesn't only happen with enemies that are lower in level whose turn would have been at the end of the round anyway. Any ideas?

They can use up their turn for Parry or Rest option just like your character can :D After all, they also have Stamina with all it's drawbacks if decreased, not sure if unlimited magic points though (I Think all monsters have unlimited casting ability, but they fall asleep after a lot of casting - Stamina).

About that with resistances, you got it right, I found some info somewhere also which says the same. Also just to make it known for everyone - it seems a weapon's special effect (like Poison or Stone) depend on a character's CURRENT level, not on the entirety of all the levels he has had so far in any other classes. So with much class switching, characters will get lots of different cross-class skills and spells, but their combat performance should be poor when they're hit by an enemy spell or cast a spell on enemy.
It would be probably best to switch once or twice, like making a Mage for best Mana regeneration and after that to Monk, then maybe at level 5 to a Ninja, but beyond that would start to hurt the character already.

Eh, I hadn't though of that. But if it's really parrying, the AI is pretty bad, since in the cases where the awakened monsters get no turn, it happens right from the beginning (I often have mobs knocked out and awakened from the start because I use the Poet's Lute a lot). Weevils for example always seem not to act in that round, while Gorn Spearmen and Rangers do.

Ah, that's probably because their initiative is already spent after you had yours, I think, or something like that. I'm not sure of the exact game mechanics there, but it seems to have to do with the initiative value which every enemy, and player characters, do have. You can look it up for your party characters with the Cosmic Forge editor through Save Files Viewer, the value raises with each level. If yours is higher than that of the enemies, you begin the round first.
The enemies seem to be able to act only in the next round then. It seems to be random, so sometimes they also act in the same round you awoke them through melee hit or spell.

As a side note - I always wanted that PSI ROD weapon that T'Rang Assassins used in battles (just a monster attack name actually), but was disappointed to find out it never dropped as an item.
So I created a PSI ROD as a droppable item, from higher rank T'Rangs, with Cosmic Forge Editor, sticking close to the parameters of the T'Rang monster attack with the same name, and modified it to be dropped (very rarely) from strongest T'Rangs like T'Rang Assassins, Elders and Shritis T'Rang NPC.

It's relatively easy to do with that editor, but if anyone would like the modified files for it anyway, to be placed in the game folder, just PM me and I'll send them.

Hello, mates
 

Hi, all,
I just passed W 6 in its 2 variants:
Combat
Piece

I prepared for transfer of my team chars from 6 to 7.
I am using W 7 cracked version of Oldgames site. Version 1.2

First problems:
The first beginning of the game is terrible slow. MSdox v. 7.4.
Especially the opening of the green book.
I try to increase CPU speed with Ctrl+F12, but it up from 100 to 105% and no visible increase. My PC is relatively fast and has 6 from 7.9 index value.

Sadly, no my team appeared when the game started.
The game dir is c:/>Dsavant/ . The file is DJ2. Have i transfer my savegame.dbs file from W 6 in W 7' dir - C:>dsavant/ ?

Being absolute novice i will be glad of every advise.

Thanks a lot from

yoga

Do not hesitate to ask me any question.
I know that this game is not easy, harder than W6 and i am ready for the future days.
:smile2:

Copy the end savegame file from the Wiz6 folder to the Wizardry VII folder and then load the savegame with exactly this name (click in the savegame loading dialog and type its name when loading instead of the default one), after starting Wizardry 7, to transfer it and begin with your heroes the new game.

How high are your CPU cycles, shown in DosBox window title? Around 10.000 - 14.000 are enough for the game to be fast and playable. Try setting them in the dosbox.conf file (Start - DosBox folder - Edit configuration).

Dear Master,
i duly followed Yr instructions conc. transfer of savegame from 6 to 7.
Sadly, i see on the screen ..Loading... and Nothing more.
I wait minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes...nothing.
This is some twisted version of Oldgames site, where the DosBox is incorporated in some .Bat file and ..sadly i forget what dos command may open the Bat file to read its content..
This version does not allow me to see the real CPU cycles, but this is no so important for me..
(I opened the dosbox.conf file.)

Hmm..i will do some more attempts to solve transfer problem. But if they are unsuccessful i will start the game as Kmonster and provably You did - without any advances due to Diamond rings etc..

brave no need any privileges Y'now
:whistling:

Well I would link you to an Utimate Wizardry Archives version of Wizardry VII, but unfortunately Abandoneer (where the game could be downloaded) went offline, and I'm not sure if the version on Abandonia wasn't modified with Cosmic Forge Editor, in which case some of it's aspects are easier than intended originally. I could send you my Wizardry VII RAR archive which I downloaded from Abandoneer earlier, though.
Maybe the problem is with Windows 7 and that administratory access thing (not much knowledge there since I'm only using the old Windows XP). Remember when you had troubles to load the savegame in Wiz6 until you solved the problem?

Hurray! Once again!Noch ein Mal!

I did. Yes.
How? I entered the Dos prompt:
C:>dir savegame.dbs s/ Enter and find all dbs files.
Then i replaced these files with my last savegame file from 6 and after short jorney with Bela i was before some city of Glory where big strange creature sent me as New recruit with password Victory.
All my team is here. Sadly the face images of KMONSTR MAGE AND PACO MONK are identical. I tried to change but W 7 did not have new images.
Pls to be excused, not my fail..

So, mighty brave is on the road again!!

Dear Master, Thank You for Your kindness.

Ну, Володя, ни пуха, ни пера!:smile2:
(All the best, brave!)

Err, you did what? :huh: You replaced all DBS files with your savegame(s) from Wizardry 6?
Then you deleted essential files of Wizardry 7, no wonder you don't see correct portraits anymore. DBS files are not only savegame(s) in Wiz7 but also system files the game requires. You should re-install the game again, and replace only the savegame.dbs file with your save from Wiz6.

After that, if you still see incorrect portraits, while in the inventory, click on the yellow bar with name of a character below his/her portrait and click on picture.

Yes, yes,
Master, i replaced only Savegame.dbs. I am no so stupid.. ha ha ha:p

Pls see the pics attached.

Have i to increase same Skills as in W6?
I duno how to trade between my commandos.
Pls see about equipment? Ist das richtig?
Q: When i meet 2 opponents and want to:
Concentrate 5 members on N 1 and only Capo Bard to hit N 2 with Lute, how to understand when Capo beats N1, when- N2?
Am i clear en.?

Merci.

Map Kit?
:3:

About equipment:
Scatty the ninja has no extra special item transferred from W6 (diamond ring always transfers)
Brave the Valkyrie has transferred silver gloves, poor choice. Mantis gloves are better and a good weapon like Maenad's Lance (or Avenger or maybe Blade Cuisinart) instead would make a big difference
Twill the priest has transferred the Robes of Enchant which is ok although the holy basher would help more in the beginning but if you want to switch him to Lord later you won't won't need it any more.
Paco the monk has transferred the Hayai Bo weapon which is good for ranged combat but hiding and backstabbing with Hand&Feet will help more on the long run.
Capo the bard has transferred a displacer cloak which is useful.
Kmonstr the mage has no useful special item transferred (Rods of Sprites is always transferred and the crystal wand is useless)


About skills:

Raising the casting skill to 100 should be the no 1 priority for all characters.
As physical skill everyone should get 10 in swimming fast so you can enter a water square to train the skill further without drowning.
One character (bard or ninja) needs skullduggery for opening chests and doors and having a scout won't hurt.

Train hiding and backstabbing with your monk and ninja.

:hihihi:
I may return to W6 and fulfill the requirements for the best equipment but i do not want to feel again the terror of transfer.
Gladly, You both do not know how terrible is this twisted variant of W7. And how difficult is to make it operative!
So, i accept to continue without any more improvements of my condition.
Anyway, i hope i have some small advances now, even i do not need any.

..Still i learn this new enviroment which is different from endless corridors of W6 (strange, i like them more than this game images).
This is absolutely new enviroment for brave.

Please, do not blame me for my fails and mistakes.
As usual i do my best and more to enter this nice hard game.
Grazie!

Also keep in mind that while you swim, your stamina is drained quickly. With 10 skill in swimming you can swim only 1 square, after which you won't have enough stamina left and drown if you move to yet another square. The higher your Swimming skill, the less stamina will be drained and the further you can swim. Still, even at 100, usually only for 5-6 squares before characters begin drowning, so always save before swimming.

In combat you can select which group to attack (depending on how far your weapon can reach - short, extended or thrown/shot), and after that when your party makes its turns you can see who hit (or missed) whom etc. You can't select single opponents within a group to attack, your characters choose automatically. Can do that only in Wizardry 8.
Just go into a fight and see how it works, it's simple enough.

Map Kit is necessary for you to see a small overhead map if you use it. One character needs to be training Mapping skill and using the Map Kit, your choice who. At higher levels of that skill you can see more detailed map, which is very useful. You should use the Map Kit while viewing the world, not in the inventory.
It is very useful to not get lost in Wizardry VII, the world is very large, so you should concentrate one of the party members on that skill.

Even with perfect mapping skill using the journey map kit still doesn't yield a good automap and is very cumbersome to use. If you want to use it nevertheless 10 mapping skill is enough to cover the basics, the rest can be done when casting skill is maxed. Since priest and mage will have maxed their casting first you might want to give the mapping skill to one of them, valkyrie and bard might work too but monk and ninja need their academic skillpoints.

You can consider class changing with your characters, your Valkyrie could take 9 levels of Valkyrie, then 9 levels of ninja and switch back to Valkyrie afterwards for extra skillpoints and picking up ninjitsu and kirijitsu as ninja.
Twill could change to lord at level 9 for extra skill points and better fighting.
But remember that stats will drop to the racial class minimum after switching.

:D
Still in the town of Glory - Ukpyr, exploring and increasing my levels.
SCATTY NINJA AND PACO MONK - LVL 6
ALL OTHERS - 7 LVL

I still do not find Ukpyr Quee or Smithy..
Here i notice that during my restoring sleep no interruptors as in W 6 which was very unhandy.
..Some stupid blonde girls with red Yamaha motors are strong opps. Still..:smile2:
After some formalities here i have to start my jorney to famous New city.

Excuse me pls, do You see some German speaking NPC named Sacred_Path or he falls down with the dead of the braves?
Ja?

I'm afraid Brombadeg the Sea Monster dragged him to the bottom of the sea :p Be careful with that monster when you meet him later yourself.

Be careful on your way to New City, some tough battles for you on the way there. Probably too tough for the current level of your characters, if you go explore sideways off the way.

Thanks for info, dear Master and Gyry.

...It is very strange for me that i will meet strong opposition, being lvl 6/7?
What about the novices, who will start with level 1?
I duly increase my Swimming skill waiting for a river.
How have to be Swimming skill for team member to swim without problems a river? 10 points? More?
Increasing Skills, i have no idea which ones to up and therefore I act randomly, so eventual mistakes are possible, gnadige Kmonster..
Expecting (i did some preliminary expeditions on the road to New city already) strong opps (as that blonde girls with motors-like ) i plan to increase more my levels before my start to this New city.

..Some spells from W6 are kept here as Direction, Knock-Knock, Mental Attack and more.
But the battles here are not so fast...

Pls i will paste some Inet statement and want Yr notes as well:
..Start of the quotation:

Super Interchangeable Faerie
A Fairy is interchangeable between the classes of Bard and Thief. Here's how I normally do it.
Roll a Faerie Ninja, and remember to have a few points of Kirijutsu (so you don't lose it). Around level 5-6, when you are fighting groups that give you 1500+ xp, after (or even during) a fight, you can switch your Faerie to Bard (or thief) for a level almost every fight.
In using this method, by the time my other characters were level 10, my faerie had 120+ hp, and 100 on at least 2 stats per category. And all of the best mage spells.

..End of the quotation..
:whistling:

For swimming wait until everyone has 10 swimming skill, make sure everyone has stamina, save your game, walk one step into the water and walk back out immediately. Before you repeat you can rest and/or use the stamina spell to pump up stamina again but it's best done near a stamina regenerating fountain so you don't waste so much time.
Each time a character enters the water and don't drown there's a chance for the swimming skill to improve.

The fairy class change works this way but be aware that each time you switch class stats are reset to racial class minimum (str 5, pie 6, vit 6).

New City is a kind of starter-intermediate area and there are mostly much weaker encounters, but you started in Ukpyr, which (just like areas around Rattkin Ruins, Nyctalinth, Dane Tower etc.) counts as advanced area with stronger encounters. So when you'll be getting close to New City, the encounters actually will be getting less difficult.

Increase Swimming just to 10 points, from there on you can practice it by swimming and resting. However, since recovering so much stamina takes some time, and other NPC's will be taking away hint maps which you would otherwise discover for yourself during playing, it's still recommended to put few points into Swimming each level-up and not to overdo too much with resting.

As for class changing, it can make your character quite strong, just like in the quote you posted. However there's a negative side to it, too - special effects on weapons (like Poison, Paralyze, K.O. etc.) and spells hit opponents and are resisted by your party on the your level < - > opponent level difference. Your character resistances and number of swings + attacks per round only rise with your character level. So with extensive class changing, you will have a pretty low class level halfway into the game, and thus opponents will have it easy to hit you and roast you with fireballs, while you will have hard time to get any spell to work on them.
A little but of class changing is helpful early in the game, but after like 2-3 class switches I wouldn't recommend it anymore. Better to stay with one class after that. Unless you enjoy grinding, looking all the time for random battles to gain experience points. Which will be very tedious and boring.

Спасибо!:3:(TY).
Still in Ukpyr. I am not hurrying now.
Was enlisted. Have to be trained how to load musket.
Very funny are the pistols of these Umpati, ha ha ha.
Ich glaube that these 6 circles above my team pics operate as these in W6.
I need some Magic fountains because i am lazy.

One Q but this is ritual only:
Is the final boss stronger that Bela Dragon?
Are possible more that one variant of the game end, reflecting on my future transfer to W 8?

Very soon i will provide pics of all my team.
Surprise....!:bleh1:
Anyway advancing...
And this is abs. new atmosphere for humble brave.

Hmmm... to be fair i am surprised that the game is not so terrible hard. Ja, Ja. I expected that every opps will be as Bela or much harder. I think that this fact does not depend on Diff.

Master, i drop down an object but after i was unable to find it?? Wrong?

Pls. do not think that because i do not antwort Yr directions i not follow it. Nein. I strictly follow all of them..:3:

The final boss should be quite easy, with the levels, spells and skills your character will reach by then. In fact the only challenge for you, at the time when you'll be in that stage in the game, would be the Gorrors in Hall of the Dead, especially 2 of them. And a Godzylli (or two on Expert difficulty) who's in a way even stronger than the Gorrors, if you manage to find the entrance to the Greater Wilds. Possibly even hordes of them, and tons of experience if you manage to kill them. But I won't spoil too much there, just see for yourself, that makes the fun of it.

In Wizardry VII there are also multiple endings, 4 in number, 3 of them being the actually transferable endings. And you can transfer your party anytime from Wiz7 into Wiz8 without reaching an ending, which doesn't have a lot of impact on the transfer (skills and stats will follow the same transfer rule as with endings), only the starting in Wizardry 8 will differ slightly.
Just have to keep transferable items in mind, where you can't transfer really powerful ones anymore, unlike from Wizardry 6 to 7. Diamond Ring(s) can still be transferred in many numbers, just nerfed a bit in Wiz8 but still very useful at the beginning.

If you dropped an object somewhere, just return to that spot and it should be there. Unless you camp for 8 hours or more, then it has a chance to disappear. Critical quest items can disappear too, so be sure not to drop them accidentally if you still need them. Otherwise your game progress can become screwed without a savegame editor.

Ah, sorry, i am feeling tired..
Maybe this is usual spring tiredness maybe my reader Kindle is nice but i did not started W 7 20 hours..
:3:

10 minutes later.
....
Pls. see Yr portraits and tell me do You like or not them?
Sadly, the Great Paco is busy with his maps in the Temple and unable to react.
Dear Kmonster, Yr portrait is the same.
Master, i changed Yr portrait because i feel You do not like the old face of Godzilla.
Caro Capo?
Dear twillight, i like very much Yr portrait. Real Picasso..

..
Just teleported from Ukpyr to do my quest..

Q: Because of some reason I did not fulfil the task to meet some T''Rang or like in the forest. Is it fatal or i may do this quest now, after return from New city?
....
But why Sacred_Path is silent?
Zum Teufel!? Maybe s(he) ist krank?
:smile2::p

Your portraits are as good as any other in the game. What matters most is if you like them, after it's you who's playing. Ninjas are my favourites btw., especially the "much-loved" and -known Fairy Ninjas.
Not sure if you still can do the quest with intercepting the T'Rang spies if you've had already a meeting with Rodan Lewarx. Just exit the North gate of Ukpyr and follow the road until it starts to skip in tiles. Somewhere there you should meet K'Borra T'Rang and can either help him (aiding the T'Rang) or kill him (fulfill your spy mission in Ukpyr).

Very nice Yoga :)

Because I was bored of the loads of random combat in the Gorn castle. Then i remembered that there's an updated version of Wizardry, Wizards & Warriors. So I reinstalled that and enjoyed it quite a bit and I was like "well this is great!" until i realized that it's way too easy and nothing can change that.

:picard:

Choose the portraits you like Yoga, you have to look at them while you play after all. I'm ok with my portrait but don't like my weapons.

What good are close range weapons if you're standing in the second row and can't reach your enemies ? There's also always the risk of throwing those expensive items away with a wrong click during combat.
Equip a quarterstaff or maybe a ranged weapon (sling, bow, darts, ...) if you can.

The crystal wand is useless but expensive, sell it if you get the opportunity.

Give the rod of sprites to your monk, equip it in the secondary hand and leave the primary hand empty for kicking, this way you can attack twice as often, hide and backstab for double damage.

Are you aware that your Ninja can only attack half as often if he has a weapon in the primary instead of in the secondary hand or both ? I'd even keep both hands empty.

- Done.

Salut, mates.
:whistling:

Ok, one after another.
First, I'm not sure what you mean with arrow pointing on the map. It just shows your position and direction, facing south. There seems to be no object where you're standing. If there was, there would be an item icon at the very bottom in the right corner, below the portraits, which you can click on to pick it up and then click on one of the portraits to give that character the item. Try it out by dropping an item, you'll see that item at the bottom, waiting for being picked up. But only at the spot where you're standing.

The "Life 2" below the Age display shows how many times you've been killed (and revived), when it reaches 10 (I think, never was that far) and you die again, that's it - you're toast, can't be revived again and stay forever dead. So don't make it a habit to die often.

The ? before the name of item means that this item hasn't been identified. Cast Identify Item on it or examine it with a character which has the highest Artifact skill. It's no big deal however, you can use unidentified items all the same, if you know what item it is. Many items share same icons for them, though, and some are cursed and badly affect your character. So better identify anyway.

:hihihi:
Spasibo!
(Danke und Thank You).
Great!
Yes, i died once as Ninja and this game remembered this fact.
I wanted to try Resurrection.
OK, i will follow Yr direction conc. Taking object from floor.

Are there some objects which when accepted is no possible to drop down and more - they are poisonous or mortal?

? - Non identified- I met this note in many games before.

Spell Wizard Eye may show me some object around me?

@Sacred_Path
Miracle!Miracle...
O, Mein Gott!
He is here!
He is alive!
He even speaks!
He did not fall down in vicinity of New city.
The best news..
My dear companion from W 6. Please do not play this version of W 7, but grab AK 47 and follow me. We, together, will win.
If Kmonster is near invite him also.
My coordinates? Wait me at the north gate of Ykpur..

OFF
Mates, i found and start reading of e-book of R.A.Salvatore - Sojourn. And.. suprise: The first name was - DRIZZT DO'ÚRDEN -??
If my memory serves me well, this is the bad final boss of Heretic 1.3.
Moreover he is Dark Elf, Race - Drow, Class-Fighter, Align-Chaotic Good from Forgotten Reals..
and...second word was!!! Menzoberanzzan??? His born city and name of nice RPG!!
Wow!
Now i will read all about this Drizzt in the trilogy of RAS.

:hihihi: That was a good one.

Only if you equip cursed items after picking up. If you don't equip anything you can drop anything again, quest, cursed and normal items alike. Items simply lying around in your inventory only do weight, nothing more.

[quote=Scatty;451943]:hihihi: That was a good one.

O F F
Master, You correct.
My fault. The final bad boss in Heretic 1.3 is D'Sparil, not Drizzt Do'Ürden.
My excuse.

SOS!
Can some good soul help me with good maps for W7?
Because i feel confused in the Forest etc.
Thank You..
:D

The map which came with the game can help a lot:
http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/Worldmap.jpg

Other forest maps:
http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/wiz7maps-f.shtml

The two links by kmonster, and these maps together with the forest maps also, which are important component of, and were made together with this great review (might come in handy for you from time to time).

Dank U.
Respect!

:doh:

Location: Somewhere in New city. Exploring and grinding.
Level: All members 8.
GP: 26 K

I did some investigations leaving the city and trying my strenght in the forest.

Taking right side i reached some broken bridge (strange my attempt to swim this river was in vain-all drowned).
The ferryman asked me -Do you want to cross river?
I answered - Not yet.

Taking left side i reached a place when some lord informed me
- This is Gorn empire land. Enter, and die..
Well, i saved the game, pumped myself and entered the battle.
My 6 commandos v/s 1 lord Galiere + 6 Gorn samurai + 6 Gorn samurai.
I lost the battle but tryed my power.
:3:

Hmmm..i do not believe that Caro Capo will pass this game without maps, even Caro Capo as we all know is Game Master...

Pls. what do i wrong?

Identify spell??

My Brave valkirie has this spell already.
I cast the spell but : ?armor and ?sword still non changed?

Some items require higher Artifacts skill, or Identify spell power level to be successfully identified. Save before casting the spell, and if identifying fails at power level you cast it, reload and cast at higher level.
If your Valkyrie is only level 8 right now, she probably might not even have enough spell points for casting higher level Identify yet, though.

Brave Valkirie uses 56 SP casting Identify. The max SP available for this spell.
The Dice show 7. 7 x 8 = 56.

Lord Galiene was killed.

Brave and Twill the Priest are level 9 now.
Others are near to this level.

Still learn the nice maps..

Well, excuse me for a probably stupid question, but did you click on the unidentified item, after you cast Identify spell? Cause casting the spell alone is not enough, you got to click on the item in question afterwards to "use" that spell effect on it. It's also sometimes easy to click just next to, instead on, an item and so "misclick", wasting the spell in the process. You got to click exactly on the item itself, it doesn't identify if you click next to the item.

Played W7 Gold on Macintosh in bygone days
 

and still have very good memories of those time, even though I didn't finish the game. It is nice seeing somebody still plays it nowadays. :hello:

BTW nobody here mentioned yet that W7 Gold edition has voice narrative which IMO is very good addition, also graphics are greatly improved but that may do with its being version for Macintosh computers, games ported to Mac always had better graphics than PC versions (another example of better graphics is Prince of Persia II - Shadow and the Flame I think it was called - another great game and one of the few I did finish. :omg:

As for swimming in W7 which most pple seem to ignore, I remember at the very start where you land on shore of some water, I somehow took liking to exploring water and wandered about in water there which helped me pick up some swimming skills. I think I trained them a bit someplace later and I recall vaguely that after I completed the town with carnival (was it Ratkin Ruins or maybe Nyctalinth town?), where you had to use the water slide... that was great fun. I did go as far as some witch (or was it Giant) forest or witch caves or something like that, then I went back to New City (I think) where later in the game you are supposed to get the boat (I did also get to do the New City sewers underground and found the puzzle there which I think unlocks the boat but I failed miserably at the puzzle) - then instead of trying for the boat I simply started wading into the water on the town waterfront and battled some sea monsters, I think I kept swimming back to shore to recuperate and to stock up on some swiming related supplies and then I went for it for real, we swam into the wide blue yonder, not knowing whither we went and finally after an epic swim we reached an island, not sure now how many of us reached the island shore, at least one or two of the party had drowned on that perilous journey and had to be left behind. But I felt like I did something in the game which maybe nobody was expected to do such crazy thing like swimming for it without the boat LOL (swimming was also needed in that town where that carnival was if I recall correctly). I think I also swam across that river crossing (that's also the place where you can go exploring upstream or is it downstream and you find some box with much needed fighting items I think, maybe some axe or hammer.... its been so long I have only smattering of memories :huh:)

I did some exploration on the island in the dungeon (was that island where upon landing the sphinx guarding some entrance asked some funny question to be admitted? I must say the game developers put some humor into those riddles but I forgot what the question was, the sphinx basically answers it for you if you answer incorrectly, which was so funny I remember how I laughed at it for days on end when I remembered it :woot:) but on that island either I didn't have the items I needed to have like keys for use in dungeon or I wasn't high enough level - I think the problem was I lost those chars in the swim and had incomplete party, I am not sure which it was, and I just abandoned the game then and there. I couldn't swim back but I suppose I could have loaded an older savegame but then I thought I knackered the whole game anyway ;).

But I had great fun and don't quite understand negative reviews of this atmospheric game. I liked the turn based fights (first time ever for me, I mostly played real time fighting rpgs like DM II) and everything. After reading this forum here of W7 to page 25 I found with surprise that you guys do play it after all your initial misgivings (based among other on the wholly negative review on some external link given here in those early pages - before p25 here).

I never was one of those early hardy and geeky dungeon players who draw maps but this time I did draw them, I was pasting together maps of my progress in game and I think I could still find them somewhere, I have itching to return to this great game and play it properly and finish it this time. I still have the boxed gold edition which I got cheap when it went on sale (because I played in late nineties when the game was no longer new) and also have the old trusty mac to go with it, which I no longer use as I have long ago went the PC way, by the time of win98. :)

You correct, Master, as usually.
It worked!
How?
-I entered the "page"of BRAVE THE VALKIRIE aka his personal place.
I inserted some subjects with ?.
Then i clicked on the skull in the right side and cast the spell Identify.
Imm. the mouse cursor changed its color to red, appeared symbol "?" and label ""ïtem"".
At last i clicked on the unidentified subject....and Yes:
Symbol ? disappeared and expl. note appeared..
Hurray!!

Welcome aboard, dear VanDine.

Your slave is dedicated fan of RPG.
I am one of those early hardy and geeky dungeon players who draw maps.
..and my ex-companion Gnadige Sacred_Path was bored of W7 and left the game.
Well, You are kindly invited to grab the sword or AK 47 and join to me in our crusade to glory.
So, start the famous Mac and press any key to start this nice game..:smile2:

swimming
All my team members have 10+ points in Swimming skill. Still i do not try to swim some river or lake.

..Yes, Prince of Persia 2 is great game. But i think DM 2 is the best. Never in my RPG life i met so terrible opps. Even the game is not so long after appearence of these Minions, yoga was under tension every moment. Y'now they appeared everywhere. No save point or place.
I used to create my guard minions before every restore moment.Do You remembered that nasty thief, who cryied - This is mine- and ..voila my sword is not mine...

..Hmmm.. i read about the negative reactions for W7 in Net and i prepared about a year before start this game:
But my opinion is (Sry, dear Kmonster), that even colored and with better graphic W7 is not so good as W6.
Repeat: This is my personal opinion.
As Arena is better than Daggerfall,
as Prince of Persia is better than PP 2 etc..
But this is another story.

Location: I reached this MUNKHARAMA town but not entered.
Status: All commandos are level 9.
:smile2:

Is it fatal i killed Lord Galiere before meeting Capt.Boerigard?
I duno that have to be peaceful. Sorry.
Have to grinding because i needed Identify spell.
:smile2:

Thanks. Drawing maps was traditional domain of those hardy pioneers who played 'text dungeon' games virtually from 'command line' and without drawing your progress you'd be totally lost before long. I am not sure now why I did draw maps of W7, maybe I didn't know they exist on net or whatever. I talk about years 98 99...

After posting I went to look at W7 maps and realize now I got many names and locations wrong (the island I swam to was Isle of Crypts, carnival was Funhouse in Munkharama...
I remember there was one house somewhere past the first City where every time you entered, it triggered attack from like 10 brute fighters and that was good place to stay for a bit and train your party in repeated fights to get some decent levels.

I'd be inclined to agree with you regarding W6 and if I should replay W7 I would want first to play W6 (also can import party to W7 from it)

But I am sucker for pretty pictures, and I got to play games by the time those 'second' editions were coming out, that's why I played DM2 and PoP2 and W7 and only got the first editions of DM and PoP and W6 later on and the more primitive graphics put me off a bit (on the other hand, I don't like too spiffy graphics or 3d that today's games have)

DM2 was among the few games I finished. I read here about your struggles entering the Skullkeep, I remember I also needed advice to run backwards into the doors but even that didn't do the trick. I finally solved it by dropping some items because I think their weight made me move just a bit too slow. As for thiefs I think I dropped my more precious stuff on floor in one of those shops which were fairly safe places, if I recall properly. The idea was that nobody can steal from you what you don't have with you. I liked the axe throwing cavemen because you could sell those axes to shop and buy supplies for Skullkeep. Battling the Minions, I think I was able to dispose of them fairly fast but don't remember anymore what I used on them. I liked the tunes and gloomy weather outside Skullkeep, that was great, inside figuring the puzzles was also great. The game finishing like in most games is not where enjoynment of the game comes from, it is the journey there that counts most.

PoP2 was my first game I ever finished to end. I played on Mac and got really good at it. The equivalent keypoint of entering the Skullkeep was jumping those pillars midway through the game. I spent ungodly hours on it, I had drawn the plan of their layout and I was able to finish this level without killing any of those flying heads with blood chilling cries :woot:, I just learned to run this level so fast and jump the pillars in full run that I escaped them. I didn't need to drop down first to dispose of them to be in peace when on top of the pillars. Really hard point was the very last pillar and the last flying head but I managed to escape that one too, but its not anything easily repetable even if you got it all down to automatic.
Also remember the earlier key point in the game where you get up on that rope bridge. I polished each level untill I was able to complete it almost automatically, everything pat down :omg:
Of course I have even right now PoP1 on my PC but I never got into it somehow as yet all those years.

I didn't play Arena but I played Daggerfall, which I didn't finish (also would believe you about Arena being better). Somewhere maybe halfway through the game I was in one of those optional dungeons where I couldn't find 'its point' to complete it to get anything out of it and I gave up after running around inside it many times over and not finding any point to it. That was badly designed game IMO, you just don't do things like that to players. I could forgive this one dissapointment but problem was it was more like rule with this game. Besides I don't like much 3D because it gives me headaches and stomach upsets after longer playing. I've always been a bit sensitive to motion sickeness in real life and those 3D games bring it on, especially in confined spaces in dungeons.

In 2001 I started with online gaming and these single player boxed games suffered accordingly. I played Legend of Mir 2 for some eight years until the company dropped the game, but it runs today still on free unofficial servers. The players are mainly British but there is sizable community of Romanians, Italians, some Americans too. If I can loose a word here for a MMORPG, I'd say LOM2 is worth looking at for anybody who likes these old abandoned games. But of course no online games can equal the likes of Wizardry or Dungeon Master, online gaming has different good points to it.

:OK:
Wow, very nice analyse of some of my favorite RPG.
You are not Newbie at all.

Excuse me pls. for my rude question (You may not answer it), am i wrong thinking that You are Netherlander?
I am humble Bulgarian.

....Starting my crusade to Orkogre, leaving New city.
Why i have feeling that this game is not terrible hard as i think before? No, no difficulty level. For the brave who killed 2 Faremen in W 6 and poor bad Frank or Lord Chaos this game looks very easy?!!
True or false?
I may kill my opps so fast that after their dead my spells continued to operate.
...
Pop2- I do not remember is this game created by legendary Jordan Mechner and his brother?
PoP 1 i passed for 41 minutes. No need of aux. live bottles and avoiding some traps ( upside down picture if Prince drank some colored potion ).

Pop2 -Yes, i remember very well that battle with the skeleton on the swinging bridge. One have to stand right on the 4-th beam and be ready for bridge collapce. Then turn around and grab the beam in question..
How many minutes yoga trembled with pressed key Shift and waiting for collapce.:smile2:

Sadly, the next Princes are not so good. I note that after the first 1-2-3 games, the idea is going to hell and new authors think that nice colors and graphics will hide the bad story. NO! Not with yoga..
I do not care about the color graphics (somethime and sound&music).
I played Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion of Elder Scrolls series.
The best is Arena. I politely recommend You this diamond. But start with Race who used the spell Passwall-if my memory serves me well this was Knight.
Then is Morrowind.
Then Daggerfall (Sry, Master Scatty) - Terrible maps. I need 2 lifes to understand the algorithm of these maps. Gladly i have the spell - Return to entrance-.
Oblivion is ...nothing.
Skyrim...never. The story is used to 0%...

DM2 was among the few games I not finished. The reason is very simple.
Stupid yoga used only Mouse to play the game. Fatal mistake!!!
But final boss was too fast and poor yoga who has no training with KB and Mouse simply was unable to kill it. Well, i keep the last save file and maybe .. in a mean time will try to win..

What about Betrayal at Krondor?

Hearthless killer! :cry:

Actually Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time was one of the better games from the series, I think. So was the movie which is based on the game, from 2010, I found it to be pretty good.

Daggerfall DID have terribly designed dungeon maps (and the very confusing automap), I absolutely agree with you there. I always explored these dungeons only with that portal spell cast before, and using a cheat key to jump among key points in a dungeon to find an item required for side quests. Otherwise they're far too confusing and you could spend hours in them just trying to figure out which way to find the exit, it's been nothing but frustrating. Fortunately the dungeons are much improved (and smaller) in The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind.

On the subject of killing Lord Galliere - that's no problem at all, in fact you're often pretty much forced to kill him since he blocks your path. If you didn't find and spoken to Capt. Boerigard and took his letter yet, you can't proceed without fighting that Galliere. Besides, he and his called Ashigaru give a lot of experience (IF you survive the battle early on, which is pretty hard) so I always killed him anyway, even if I had the letter to give to him. It's much more fun that way :D And it doesn't have any consequences for you at all, no other NPCs being upset about him being killed.

Danke sehr.
The Sands of Time was one of the better games from the series, I think.
Sure?
Hmmm... politely disagree.
The new Princes games transform the brave hero in Grasshopper.
More over they have many Time limited tasks, i hate similar tasks.
Tell me, pls, do You know someone who play now some PoP?
I do not remember.
But as i said before:
The Russians said- По вкус и по цвет - товарищи нет..
(There are no comrades on taste and color).
The charisma of the first game is unique.
(Not true for Doom 1, Dune 1). But Doom 3 is crap!

OFF
Master, what is Your opinion about Heretic 1.3 and Heretic 2?

@Caro Capo
Hearthless killer!
Si, si.
Pls. wait for ......
:3:

Who passed Wizardry 8?
Sie, Gnadige Kmonster?

In Orkogre dungeon...:D

Love Heretic. Love Hexen and Hexen 2. Never liked nor played much Heretic II. The latter doesn't have much to do with the story of previous games, only the names, and lacks the same epic mood of the previous games, having been an attempt at "cashcow" for squeezing out yet more sales money.
Well, PoP Sand of Time is not the best in the series, of course, the very first game was the best without doubt. But it's certainly far better than the terrible Prince of Persia 3D which came out somewhere around 1999.

Actually I was more than halfway through Wizardry 8 with my imported from Wiz7 Fairy Ninja and Mook Lord double (Wizardry 8, in my humble opinion, is best played with 1-2 characters only - higher levels possible only then) when I decided to start over from level 1 with Felpurr Rogue and Bard to have more challenge. So I'm still at the beginning again (wordplay intended) but have all the fun and more all over. Gotta love Wizardry 8, it has so much replay value.

:hihihi:
Abs. agree with above mentioned note!
True is true. (terrible Prince of Persia 3D).
This is the game i stopped 2 minutes before the end.

I see You enjoyed with W8.Nice. W 9? :3:

Help pls. Am i really in Orcogre dungeon?
The enviroment around me changed non stop? What is this? Hidden teleporters?
Do You remember some small living thing (squirrel like) jumping before the team or magical fountain?
:hihihi:

IMHO when the game series changes radically, like from 2d to 3d, you can't compare between them anymore, they are basically like different games that perhaps share only the story behind them, because the game mechanics are so different.

PoP3 'Sands' and later editions are perhaps comparable to some game from the TombRaider series? I've only played TR1 but the latest out looks maybe worth looking at? But that don't belong here on abandonia ... :unsure:

Yesterday I was working on a ladder outside my place (btw yoga I hail from Czech Republic but long time I lived in Canada where my early gaming took place) and some birds flying by made crowing noises that were just like bird sounds in wizardry7 LOL I felt like I was in game and some turn based fight was just starting :sneaky: - not sure if PC version of W7 has those sounds at start of each encounter?

Yes there are typical sounds for each group of same-looking creatures that are played at the start of each round (of your party and enemies' alike).

@Yoga - I don't know if you're in Orkogre castle, all dungeons look the same in Wizardry VII anyway. There are sometimes hidden teleporters in various dungeons which can only be seen with the map kit, only if your Mapping skill is high enough, and only after you stepped on a teleporter at least once already. Can be often very confusing, better use your map kit very frequently to keep track of where you are.

:3:
Ah, the difference between Reality and Game virtuality is very thin.
Ha ha ha
Many times brave jumped in the night sweating and crying:
- I kill that Lord Xeen?
....
Yes, PC version is with sounds.