A few questions about party wipes

[Matt]

Hey everyone,

Playing In the Abysmal Bottom, and I just had my first party wipe :

On 4th Floor, encountered something like 4x7 monsters that I had never seen before, just though to myself "there are so many of them, they can't be *that* dangerous, and they must be susceptible to MAKANITO (suffocation)". Well, they weren't. Also, they had a small breath attack that most of them used... 4 dead chars after first round, and running failed miserably.

So my questions are :

1) Will the bodies be precisely where the party got wiped, or can they be anywhere in the surroundings ?

2) Is it guaranteed that I'll be able to find *all* the bodies ?

3) Does it matter how long I take to make it back there, or do I have all the time I need/want ?

4) Is there a risk that some items will be missing, be it worned gear or recently found loot ?

[archolewa]

1) They will be precisely where the party got wiped, but you can find them anywhere within that "section" of the maze. I'm not 100% sure what constitutes a "section," but roughly it's any square that you can get to from the Square O' Dead People without going through a door.

2) Yes.

3) No.

4) Yes, dead characters often lose one or more pieces of equipment.

[nftyw]

1) You have to make sure you're using the "Dead Bodies" menu (R2 plus.. top button? On my controller? Or use 'M' or 'B' key if you're using a Keyboard) and it will magically scour the entire "room" for any bodies. Note that dead bodies count as player characters so you'll have to kick out (Disband) party members to make room. Teleportation or Evacuate magic is really helpful here.

2) All the party members will be in the same 'room'. However, there is a chance that a party member will get deleted at the time of the party wipe. You can check in the Training center in town to see if all the characters are just "Dead" or if one is "Lost," sometimes this will happen to a party member randomly and they are done for, they got eaten and all their gold and items are unrecoverable, just delete and move on. nothing you can do.

3) In some other games in the genre corpse decay is a thing, I've never seen it happen to me in this game across many scenarios, and it's not for lack of trying.

4) On party wipe you can lose equipment, yeah. There are pieces of gear that help protect against losing gear/party members on wipe, but not every scenario will be kind enough to give them to you, especially early on. Some scenarios will erase key items if they're on the slain party member and you get to recollect them, others won't.

[Matt]

Thank you both for your answers :)

It took surprisingly little time to build a level 9 rescue team from scratch (probably less than 2 hours). The fact that I could equip them with decent (for their level) gear helped, ofc.

Everybody has been rescued and is well !

(no deleted party member, and no loss of equipment, as far as I can tell)

[archolewa]

Yeah, once you hit floor 4 recovering in Abysmal Bottom is pretty quick because of that Corridor O' Combat on floor 3. Great to hear you didn't lose anything. Good luck! And remember, Deadly Air is really good in this scenario, as is the Priest's Carnage. Deadly Air doesn't have the monster power level limitation that Suffocation has, and a *lot* of nasty enemies in Abysmal Bottom need to breath.

[Matt]

Didn't know that (about Deadly Air and Carnage).

For some reason, I believed that Deadly Air would only have a *chance* to suffocate the monsters, but I seems I was wrong and it's 100% (unless monsters have a specific resistance, I presume).

What's so special about Carnage ? Edit : oh, that would be instant death to every ennemy ? That's even more devastating than Nuclear Blast. Are some ennemies resistant ?

And btw, is there a link to a site that would explain the spell effects with a bit more details ?
In particular (but not only)
what are those Sixth and Seventh Boons ?
Does prodigy allow to exceed race maximum ?
Sleep chance of working ?

[nftyw]

Sixth/Seventh Boon requires character lvl 13 or higher to be cast. It drains level by one (stacks) and offers you a randomized chance of a handful of choices of powerful effects -- battle buffs, spell point maximizing, enemy teleportation among others. Seventh Boon occasionally offers full party revival on top of that, making it a good option for healing low Vit characters if you dont want to risk them failing to revive and don't mind losing a level for it. It also can be used for an emergency party revive in a tough battle... if you can get lucky enough for the choice to appear.

Prodigy's ability to boost stats is dependant on the scenario, some let you really pump up the numbers, others are very strict about point limits.

Sleep generally has a very strong chance of working in general, though often most low level mobs are specifically set up to be weak to sleep (particularly humanoids) whereas you will get times when undead, slimes, magical creatures will ignore sleep entirely.

Note that this is all sort of the 'standard' set up, scenario makers can fiddle with the spells to the point where they can be quite different than stock Five Ordeals effects.

[archolewa]

Originally posted by Matt:

Didn't know that (about Deadly Air and Carnage).

For some reason, I believed that Deadly Air would only have a *chance* to suffocate the monsters, but I seems I was wrong and it's 100% (unless monsters have a specific resistance, I presume).

Some enemies do have a specific resistance. Generally, enemies who don't need to breath won't be affected (undead, most demons, that sort of thing). However, humanoid enemies tend to be *very* susceptible to it, and there are a lot of very beefy and dangerous humanoid enemies in Abysmal Bottom.

What's so special about Carnage ? Edit : oh, that would be instant death to every ennemy ? That's even more devastating than Nuclear Blast. Are some ennemies resistant ?

Enemies do have a saving throw to resist, but the higher your character's level compared to your enemy, the better the chances of it landing. So it can be very devastating in the hands of a pure Priest since Priests level so fast (the same thing applies to Prismatic Spray and its level 7 counterpart, making a pure Mage's use of those spells *very* effective). Some enemies do have extra resistance to Death. That will be mentioned in their bestiary entry.

[Matt]

Yep, I noticed that Deadly Air is sometimes resisted (by monsters that would most of the time be slain), but it's quite rare indeed.

I don't have a pure Mage or a pure Priest in my (main) party, but I have a Priest turned into a Mage, and a Mage turned into a Priest. Which is almost the same in the long run (1 less level, maybe ?).

Third caster will be a Bishop (ex Mage, ex Priest). I know this isn't optimal spellwise (unless maybe the scenario allows very very high endgame levels), but I really like the convenience of being able to identify items without returning to the castle.

I really do like the scenario.

Mapping is a bit tricky, but quite fun (the party can cast *alot* of Wizard Eye, which helps).

And I'm under the impression that there are several references to Wizardry III, which was my favorite scenario back in the days (I never finished it, though. Never had the idea to build an Evil party, I thought the "Good" and "Evil" hints only refered to the crystals).

Just to name a few : The water section on Floor 1 (and the way to cross it), some items (Claymore, Serpent's Tooth), some monsters...

[archolewa]

Yeah that's fine. When I say "pure" Mage or Priest I mean vs. a hybrid class. Admittedly not especially precise language.

And Abysmal Bottom does go very high level, so your Bishop should be reasonably effective. Slow leveling means that their status spells won't be as effective, but Nuclear Blast is still Nuclear Blast, and Heal Party (I forget the actual name) is still Heal Party.

There are also some references to Wizardry 4 once you get deeper. In particular, the game's one (optional) puzzle is a lot easier to figure out if you know how to get to the Ultimate ending in Wizardry 4.

[Matt]

The actual name is Heal Party ;)

Mmm... I never played Wizardry 4 (nor 6, for that matter). But thanks for the reference. At least, that will give me some pointer if I'm stuck.

[archolewa]

You don't necessarily need to have played Wizardry 4 to figure out the puzzle, it just uses a couple of the same tricks. And it's only there as an alternative means of beating the scenario (basically, if you solve the puzzle you can avoid a boss battle).