Ironman run

[msstaves]

Saw a post awhile back about someone who was trying an Ironman run. This is my favorite old game, and I thought that was a great idea and I figured I'd give it a try too.

Ground rules I've set for myself:
- no save/restore (obviously)
- easy difficulty
- I have editted the game to give faeries extra stats. I could just grind forever as thief/bard switch which I'm not going to do, so I figure this balances out my stat editting.

Brainstorming party setup...
- Faerie seems to be probably the best race. If I think of things that can kill me a lot of it will come from dazzling lights, insanity, or mass paralyze. Resistances of faerie should prevent deaths out of the blue which helps make up for lack of equipment choices. My one concern with faeries is that I won't have enough physical damage to deal with the robots in the tomb.
- Monk has best resistances of the classes so I'll probably end up mostly with this long term. I'm debating trying to get the cane (but again no save/restore so i only get one shot I think) in which case i'd grab a ninja
- Going to do a bunch of class swapping at the start to get HP/MP/accuracy ratings up. I won't have a prayer otherwise i think. If it ends up being easy I can always do another run.
- First 3 chars will start off powering kirijutsu so i can exp quick and make up for lower damage, and last 3 will power magic schools for area of effect spells + buffs

Should be interesting! Share any insights or ideas with me... i'm going to need it!

[msstaves]

Musings on the things that kill you...

I've probably played a dozen or so run throughs of the game now. Most of them with no class changing and with various mini-challenges (only spell casters, expert mode with only valks, etc). Here's the fights and things I'm planning around that kill me often in normal runs...

- Chests. So random and so much bad luck is possible here. I'm thinking I'll probably minimize chest opening overall for this reason. Only get chests that are needed to advance or have really good possible items
- Dazzling lights + similar effects. Going to need lots of light resistance since i can't just reset
- Insanity. Having chars with 100 kirijutsu go crazy is recipe for disaster. Psi resist is going to be important
- Mass paralyze (D Savant fight in particular)
- Murakato inner sanctum. I seem to remember it can asphyxiate. I'll need higher levels to deal with that
- Lord of dark forest. This guy is routinely one of the top 3 hardest fights for me
- Winkum globe fight with skeleton lords. Mass paralyze + stuff that casts fireball. I guess I could leave this until later
- Dane tower - high fathers.
- Dane tower - Magna dane fight
- Bromedag
- Emerald dragon - Should be less of an issue with class changing, but sometimes this has been hard
- Meta-droid in city in the sky
- Robots in the tomb. Especially the cosmo-bot fight. Any can be deadly if you get two groups
- D Savant due to mass paralyze

So much to plan around...

[msstaves]

First update on the run.

Party: 6 faeries. Class changing more of less non-stop. At first I switched every time I hit level 2, but now am doing it at 3 so I can start getting spells and spell points.

Beginner dungeon: Promptly lost 1 char to a poison dart trap on the very first chest. I had to do the rest of the dungeon on 5 chars until I got the amulet of life. The slimes that can breathe acid gave me a few close calls. Ra'sep went down easily. Lost 1 char to the chest at the end's guardian trap, then used amulet to bring the 2 back to life. Looking forward to getting recharge... going to need it

Getting the map: No issues here. The phoot battle was pretty easy. The chest trap was poison again and I had to burn a cure poison potion to save losing a char.

New city: Finally got ranged weapons for my back 3 here. I used the holy sacrament in the monastery to get the map there. A dazzling lights trap killed one of my chars there so that was my 3rd charge of the amulet used. I then cleared most of new city to grind some more levels/skills/hp. I'm skipping old city which I'd normally due now as I don't want to face the sludges that breathe poison and there is nothing i really need there.

Orkogre: Killed the savant trooper to get to talk to the guy in jail and that ended up being easier than expected. I'm on the journey north now. I'm going to try and keep half my party monks to deal with the non stop blindness from gorn rangers without having to run all the time. Little worried for the ashrigaru fight too...

[DVX]

Following this thread with great interest! I couldn't imagine playing Wizardry 7 without lots of save scumming. My version of challenging myself is not using save states in DOSbox Daum!

Out of curiosity, what new stat minimums did you give to faeries? What kinds of class changes are you doing?

[msstaves]

I gave myself 18 pie/vit to have max mp regen and then i set 10 on anything else that wasn't already 10. So suuuuper generous on faerie stats.
So far I've been switching mostly between sam/nin/monk/valk but I think i'll start doing ranger instead of nin so i can get spell pick at level 3 and immediately switch vs nin that i think has to wait until lvl 5 for a pick

[msstaves]

Orkogre armory is now looted!

Journey to Orkogre was non-eventful. My kirijutsu on front 3 chars is up around ~50 and hands/feet is about ~75 so stuff was going down pretty fast. I'm debating hands/feet vs trying to use weapons. probably will just stick with kicking stuff down

Ashigaru fight ended up being a non-event. I got 3 of them, and used a faerie dust + level 1 blinding flash. No fireball spam from them so they went down pretty quick without much trouble. I had 2 crits in this fight. Sweet!

Next trouble spot I anticipate would be murkato innner sanctum. Going to grind to level ~5 or 6 before that just in case of asphyxiate.

One potential problem... i failed at lockpicking the bank back in New City. I'm hoping I can eventually force it with enough strength, but otherwise I might in trouble on getting in the museum later.

[msstaves]

Orkogre castle is clear! Murkatos was the main fight I was worried about, and got through that with no problems. I put all 6 chars to attack him and first round he cast... weaken. Didn't do enough damage to take him out though so had to roll the dice on round 2. He cast again... anti-magic. And I had enough juice to take him down.

I skipped the power strike gem for now since i've had hard times with that fight in past runs. I'll come back here later once I'm nice and beefy.

My first skills are now maxxed (kirijutsu for front 3, mage magic, alchemist magic, and lock picking). Debating what to do on the 2nd round. I haven't been using spells much at all since with my low levels I cant cast them to much effect. Probably I'll switch to final class after maxxing a 2nd skill per char.

Faerie dust has been a hidden gem so far. I used that a bunch on 2 wave fights or on large groups of rangers/lancers.

Next up is either Munkarama or Umpkyr. Scared of the lord of the dark forest fight...

[DVX]

Pray that you get a good RNG on the Lord of the Dark Forest fight so that he doesn't come with too many Dark Munk companions. I also remember the multiple waves of enemies in the Sacred Grove to be one of the most challenging fights in the game (I was unlucky and had to face a bunch of Halloweeches).

[msstaves]

Had the first close call of the run in Munkarama

After Orkogre I went back to New City to buy Crosses of Protection for everyone (one of the earliest available and best amulets in the game). With that done I figured I'd head to Munkarama to dip my toe in the water there.

All the fights were going very fast and easy and so I decided I'd take the harder fight on the way to the palace of dreams. I ended up with 2 groups: 2 mad warders and 4 dark forest monks. First attack the first round a mad warder casts sleep... uh oh... between that and other first round spells 4 of my party members are disabled. I tried to spend the next 6 rounds running but no luck (maybe some fights are unrunnable? I've never tested it). I quickly lost two of my charechters, was getting low on hp, and hadn't taken a single enemy out yet...

Finally I remembered that I could hide, so I did that with all 4 members. At that point it was a battle of attrition with me casting level 1 spells (my chars were level 4 or lower for this fight) and hoping that the poison all 4 of my chars had on them and the random spells didn't kill us off. Finally after about 30 rounds I was able to take them out. I was left with 2 chars dead and the rest at between 10% and 20% life. I used the last of my air magic curing poison, and couldn't even revive chars since they would come back poisoned and i had no way to cure it.

From there it was a long tense run back to New City. I had to run from a fight along the way. Something I never do in normal play throughts. Finally I got to the fountain, cured up, rezzed, and am back in business.

But where to go now? 4 furies fight in Munk sounds terrifying..... I may switch to Umpkyr first

[msstaves]

I ended up going to Umpkyr next. It was a smooth run over and I was able to start getting levels. I think i'm done class changing at this point. I'm running 5 monks and 1 ninja. I've got roughly 2 skills maxxed in each category and hopefully that'll be enough. Umpkyr is smooth and easy as always since there are no big fights if you just do enough to get the com link device

Next up was back to Munkarama. I went for the holy work area first and it was MUCH easier now that I had some levels. I had several fights with mad warders + ninja groups and all went down easy (mostly to crits). The Lord of Dk Forest fight was a bit scary since it spawned a group of ninjas, a mad warder, and a group of dk forest monks. I have 3 chars who could cast mass area effect spells (1 nuclear blast and 2 deadly air) at level 2 and I went for that. It killed all but the lord, one ninja, and one dark forest monk. I took about 60% damage on one of my chars from the lord, but in the end got them down with no losses.

Next big hurdle was opening all the chests. I had one char get stoned, but I've got cure stone now so no big deal. The fight with the skeleton lords is another one i'm nervous about and I ended up getting 6 lords across 4 groups. Fortunately only 2 chars were paralyzed. I was able to get them down with no losses and they didnt start fireballing me until round 3. I had used create life which was a good distraction.

The land of dreams was pretty easy. I ended up with 3 furies but they went down quick to 3 mass effect spells + concetrated attacks. 2 rounds and they were done. I grabbed the sword since at the very end I'll need damage since I can't rely on crits vs robots.

Next up Necalynth!

[DVX]

Nyctalinth and not the Rattkin Ruins?

[msstaves]

I don't really need anything from Rattkin to complete the game since I know the boat map stuff. Only reason to go into Rattkin is to take a shot at getting Cane of Corpus. I usually don't do that in a run so I don't really know how hard it is to kill him before he runs... debating on if I should wait until after Dane tower to take my shot at getting Cane. Any other reason to go in there that I'm forgetting?

[DVX]

Good point, I suppose that there's no reason to do the Rattkin Ruins except for the cane of corpus and the boat map from the spear puzzle (and the XP, but you seem to have that covered). I'm thinking of the game too much from a completionist rather than an ironman mentality.

[msstaves]

Pretty easy mode day in the run today. Ran through Ncyalinth to the point of getting the control card. No big deal there since there is nothing but random enounters.

Made my way to Dane tower which will be my next stop. Completed the first 3 levels which are pretty straightforward. The trap tile that can cause insanity was nice and the bit it caused i cured quickly with sane mind. I'm on the 4th floor now and have opened the gate but still need to get the stone from the chest.

One of the chests had a spectral ray that killed one and stoned another. Less of a big deal now that I have 1 char that can res, 2 that can cure stone, and a couple reserve res scrolls.

I'm worried for the high father fights and especially the magna dane fight. Lots of nasty nasty spell potential for wipes there

[DVX]

Have you found the Legends map yet?

[msstaves]

Yup was lucky and got the legends map from the Holy Sacrament chest in New City.

Dane tower is cleared. Glad I used spell picks on cure stone as I got hit by 3 basilisk eye traps in coffers. Also got 2 kiss of death traps. Sooooo many chests in here. Definitely one of the harder parts of the run is hoping for good chest RNG.

Spawn fight was easy after using fire shield first round. For the high father fight behind the chrome door I didn't mess around and used 3 sets of mass AOE damage spells at level 4 (the max i can cast at current levels). Magna dane spawned with only 1 high father and nothing else. First round he used lightning which hurt, but way better than instant death or physical attacks. I took him out in the 2nd round to finish up the tower.

Now the tricky part... I jammed the bank door in New City. Need to figure out how to get in there so I can keep progressing. Once that's done I'll grab the magestik wand.

Going pretty smooth at the moment! Brombadeg is the next fight that I'm a bit worried about. Debating on when to make a try for the cane too. Possibly before dragon caves as I'll need extra damage for the robot guarding the space ship