A trick to level up

[ryantks]

Wizardry 8 is the game I spent hundreds of hours on, and I have learnt so much from you guys in this forum.

I would like to contribute to the forum and therefore post a trick to level up that I learnt from elsewhere. Sorry if it has been posted before.

You will need someone that learnt the Charm or Mindread spell, and someone that has level up on hold.

When meeting Marten in the Sea Caves, you answer his questions and get a Destinae Dominus and 400,000 bonus XP. Do not quit the conversation but press "magic" and then the spell (Charm or Mindread). The level up mark will appear in the character icon. Press the level up mark to show the level up screen but discard the changes, and you can leave the conversation without Marten disappearing. Then you can speak to Marten again to get the Destinae Dominus, and more importantly, the 400,000 bonus XP.

The only downside is that you will have many Destinae Dominus but I think it is easy to find some chests or lockers to dispose them.

Edit: There are 2 things that need to be handled when using the above trick:

1. When leaving the conversation, it actually results in a strange view where you can move or talk to Marten again, but you cannot use items or cast spells such as return to portal. And if you click on any character and exit, you will return to the conversation with Marten. I found 2 ways to resolve this:
- Talk to Marten again but intentionally answer wrongly, then you will leave the conversation normally with Marten still "alive".
- Press "Q" to quick save (no message will appear but the quick save does work), restart the game, load the quick save and everything should work as normal.

2. The insane effect of Destinae Dominus seems permanent and cannot removed by just putting them in the chest or locker. I will keep the last DD by the character with Helm of Serenity, so that the insane effect is removed before putting this last DD into the chest or locker.

[Zergs]

lol I love stuff like this. Probably won't use it but good to know, and I've never heard of this bug either.

Thanks for posting.

edit - I take that back. I will try it out once on the playthrough I'm streaming right now :)

[Abscondrel]

interesting way to push into high levels. discussions about the numbers at high levels are not uncommon here. this could be used to sort them out for different parties. even though by the time i usually get to marten, i'm ready for the end anyway. i really dont want to be carrying DD around for exploration.

thanks for posting that

[ZombieKidzRule!]

I have played this game on and off over the years since it first came out and I have several thousand hours in total...

I have never heard of this before. That is very cool!

Just like I had never heard of the cheat to raise your stealth to almost 100, for as many party members as you want, before ever leaving the first beach and still being level 1. I only learned that about a year ago.

Thanks for sharing!

[AJAX]

ZombieKidzRule what is the secret for Stealth? I would love to give my Faerie Ninja more in the early game.

[Abscondrel]

its something to do with the first crab fight, i couldnt make it work. i use the tanika fish. it takes more patience but it does the same thing. also can be used for free shield points and also grinding non combat spells. dont kill the FISH!! use run to go over the water fall so you can use them again.
also i wait till i go back for wheel key run. so, it takes more patience that way.

[Zergs]

I have found the 3 seekers in the Upper Monastery control room to be the best place to grind stealth since they natively miss a lot.

[ZombieKidzRule!]

So, the stealth trick that I read about and has done successfully many times now is with the 3 crabs on the beach. You enter combat and don't attack. You pretty much defend. You can use continuous combat (phased) to speed things up.

If you get some good potions from the first chest and if you have any characters that can cast healing, you can use that to recover HP.

When any character starts to get too low on HP you can switch back to turn-based and you can run away. I usually go hide behind the rock right beside the door. The crabs go back to being neutral.

That allows you to rest to recover HP and any spells, if you have them. Then you do it again.

I have started a party with all level 1 stealth characters and just leveled stealth by those 3 crabs until everyone was in the 90s. Then it was just too slow grinding, even for me.

You can build any skill that you have that doesn't kill the crabs.

As others mentioned, you can do this with different groups of creatures, but the crabs are right there at the beginning and you can level stealth as level 1.

[AJAX]

I've done the standing and getting beat up but never thought about running and hiding.

[Horpner Sneed]

Fascinating trick for snagging Marten's XP bonus! It reminds me of killing Mangar over and over again in Tales of the Unknown: the Bard's Tale on my Commodore 64.

[HOK1970]

Nice trick for infinite experience!
Heard of another trick: Buy lots of flags from Kunar at Umpani Base Camp (The stock is replenished every 24 hours or 3 times full rest at the vendor). Go to Martens Bluff to Z'Ant. Take one of the flags from the inventory and click on Z'ant. It is important that the flag is removed from the inventory and not give the flag via 'Give' as a transaction! So there are always new experience points for each flag, without completing the quest.

@Horpner Sneed: I did this at Bard's Tale with the 400 berserkers in the castle. Killed them all in one round with Mindblast + text speed maximum high. Teleported down one level and then back up and they were all back. But only went on the C64, with the remaster it doesn't work anymore.

[Horpner Sneed]

@HOK1970: The remaster may have some classic mode that allows the old 396 Berserkers battle to be repeated for XP, but I never tried them. With the BT2 combat system enabled they aren't as easy to kill in the first place.

[HOK1970]

@Horpner Sneed: I wish you a happy new year and hopefully you got in well.
Bard's Tale Reamster is really worth playing, if only to feel 30 years younger again. But I won't do the Clasic Mode anymore, because the game can be very annoying without automaping. Also, the adopted combat system from BT2 makes the fights a little more interesting.

However, Bard's Tale cannot compete with the replay value of a Wizardry 8. Every game at Wizadry 8 is different...... And usually different than planned and expected. I have tons of games, but Wizardry 8 is kind of the only game that can excite me in the long run.

[Horpner Sneed]

Completely agree! I made it to Harkyn's Castle before I got bored. But to be fair I've played through the original Bard's Tale dozens of times. It was an early C64 game I had, I played on the school lab computers on Apple ][, and eventually the Amiga version. I've replayed all those versions on emulators as well. I made it through BT2 roughly twice, and never BT3. So I'd like to finally finish BT3 on the remastered version someday.

But at this point I've played Wizardry 8 a whole lot more--it is far more interesting and a brilliant evolution of the game-play pioneered by Bradley in Wizardry (one) and first improved in the Bard's Tale.

[ZombieKidzRule!]

I agree with the posts right above. W8 holds a very special place in my heart and I have well over 2,000 hours over the years since it originally was released. I go back to it frequently.

With that said, if someone took W8, kept everything about it, but just changed the locations/maps/story, I would buy that game in a heart beat. Even if I had to start a new game but everything else was the same. Classes, Races, Spells, Weapons, Enemies, etc.

Here...TAKE MY MONEY!

[Zyro Mane]

While I commend Bradley for vastly improving Wizardry's character generation and development, quite a bit was lost with Wiz6. There's a reason while the heavy resource management of old still lives on in contemporary Jblobbers. More games should still do the mapping "challenges" though... I still need to try the three masterpieces I have heard tale of: Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna, Chaos Strikes Back, and Dark Heart of Uurkul. I have Gridmonger to help me map; much better than using Grid Cartographer for an Etrain-esque mapping experience, in my opinion.

All that aside, I love seeing more freeblobs. It seems most indie devs are making their MM6, which is cool and all, but I'd love to see one actually finish their Wiz8-ish combat game, if we can't ever get an evolution of Wiz8. A Quest that Became Legend might be fun, but it looks far simpler than Wiz8, for example. Of course, the tactical turned-based combat freeblobs look good too—Archaelund seems rather promising.

Either way, I still have Swordflight to combine my love of character creation and building and resource management—and meaningful consumables, can't forget that. Reminds me, I still need to beat chapters three to five. (Hmm, I bet Knights of the Chalice 2: Augury of Chaos scratches that itch too... with the bonus of full-party creation. Too many quality RPGs, not enough time.)