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[kmonster]

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.

[yoga]

Dear 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.

[kmonster]

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

[yoga]

Originally Posted by kmonster

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

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).


yoga

[Capo]

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.

[yoga]

Originally Posted by Capo

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.

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!!



yoga from sunny BG

[kmonster]

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

[Skeltek]

Originally Posted by kmonster

- 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

I was just randomly browsing and saw this. It's not entirely correct. The wand doesnt have to be unidentified while using it. I raised the Artifacts skill on one of my characters using identified sparkle sticks from 1 to 58 before I ran out of wands. Would be nice if KMonster changed this, in case he is still around here.

It would also be nice to know how many items may be dropped for safekeeping per tile, map or game. I heard the games *.dbs file was dynamic and could grow (I wondered how they would cope with droped stuff while having limited space in the file).
But it would be good to know how many items could be distributed throughout the game in various locations, before the game starts dropping or deleting stuff elsewhere (I didnt find anything on that in the net).

I also successfully identified about 90% of the characters save file sections, including the offsets of mana regen, CC bonuses, last level before class change and so on, but I still got some stuff missing. If anyone else knows what those other values are for, it would be a big help.

[Scatty]

Originally Posted by Skeltek

It's not entirely correct. The wand doesnt have to be unidentified while using it. I raised the Artifacts skill on one of my characters using identified sparkle sticks from 1 to 58 before I ran out of wands. Would be nice if KMonster changed this, in case he is still around here.

He wrote don't identify them. You can identify them of course, if you want to, but you don't have to.
You can drop as many items as you like, but be aware that basically everywhere the items can and will disappear after some time, I'm not entirely sure but that's counted as "been picked up by other people". That goes for some (not all) quest items as well, so if you drop items you might need later for some quest, you can't finish that quest unless you use an editor to insert that item into your bags. That is especially the case in populated spots such as towns, whereas dropping items in the middle of wilderness they usually remain there.

[Scatty]

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.