Let's Play Wizardry 7, Part #3 - Jailhouse Rock

In modern RPGs the first reasonably civilized settlement you explore is usually some sort of utterly insignificant village or small town which contains neither grave dangers nor particularly exciting opportunites for heroism (think New Sorpigal in MM6 or Seyda Neen in Morrowind).

Not so in Wizardry 7. New City is a bustling and sprawling urban landscape filled to the brim with treasures, secrets, quests, distinctive NPCs and surprisingly fierce enemy resistance. As if that wasn't enough, you are also likely to run into quite a few rival adventurers (I met no less than three such individuals during my exploration of the city).

In a daring (or perhaps desperate?) act of defiance against the local Dark Savant authorities, the party finally manages to fight their way into the Jail. Not exactly what you would call an elegant victory but it had to be done, as it was high time to finish the party's first visit to New City.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Wizardry
• Sir-Tech
• Crusaders
• Dark
• Savant
• CRPG

[draaktatsu]

have you tried using the lizard breath weapon you have on Lizzy? It works wonders.

[Demiath]

I actually finished the game without ever using the lizard breath. Knew it was there, but somehow just never got around to trying it out.

As for the actual fight, needless to say I'm a bit more content with how the fight worked out in the video response (with a solo character on Expert) than in this first video...

[Feiwill]

Not sure if you know this, but resurrecting dead characters decreases their vitality. They will be gaining negligible HP upon lvl-ups, should you keep raising them on and on. (Don't worry about save+load meaning you're "cheating" - it's going to become inevitable relatively soon anyway.) Try casting maxed Armorplate and Enchanted Blade before the battle and maybe maxed Conjuration in the first round. Also, these weak shields are pretty useless; a 2h or 2x 1h weapon highly recommended.

[Demiath]

Thanks for that much-needed advice (I didn't know about the vitality issue)! I think I tried this fight (about 15 attempts) way too early. I need to start doing the appropriate amount of time-consuming, non-quest related level grinding, but all I've been reading about the various time constraints in this game (finding quest items in time etc.) have made me far too reluctant to spend time on anything apart from what's absolutely essential. I clearly need to get over that...

[OBSysteme]

the best RPG in my mind...

[boilerplate]

Yeah, I knew about his maps but I don't like them. I wish someone would do some full color grid-by-grid screen maps.

If I had the time, I'd do it myself.

[Demiath]

...and I guess you could also use the Cosmic Forge editor to get a very detailed overview of every map in the game, although that would probably give away too much information.... ;)

[Demiath]

I've used Tom Needham's maps (from the first link in the Part 1 video description text) and they've worked well so far. On the Files page of that site you can also download the maps (79 files) in a ZIP archive.