This game is destroying me.

[Rishnix]

I've played and beaten Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. That game was a bit of a slog. I thought I knew what I was in for when I got this to play. I've played and beaten challenging games before afterall.

But this... it's breaking me. Everytime I start to get a little further I lose it all. TPK leads to a rescue party that gets TPK and I just lose, everyone. Twice now I've lost it all and had to start over with a fresh team of level 1s. I'm at 18 hours of playtime and have only reached the 4th floor. It's always something. Instant kills from Ninjas, back to back bomb spells from high mages. Poison, paralysis. I get a character that can finally cure those and she gets poisoned and paralyzed! I've currently got 12 characters dead and lost in the maze with 5 more dead bodies in town. I am at the point of just creating level 1 fighters over and over again and selling their gear to revive my higher level guys, but that is so time consuming.

I don't know what to do. My previous team was all level 8 and got wiped on the 4th floor. Tips, tricks, suggestions, anything. Please, help.

[Stefan_Marley]

Honestly it doesn't sound like you're doing anything "wrong"; this game is the OG of cRPG's and as such it is BRUTAL. Really my only advice is even more patience; level 8 chars are (imo) just barely ready for level 4. As a suggestion - when your healer is down to half of his/her possible casts for healing spells start heading back to town so you can heal up if you get a random encounter/ambushed on the way back. There is tremendous debate on party make-up so I will just share what I usually go with: FIGHTER, SAMURAI, THIEF, PRIEST, MAGE, MAGE. Also, the version I 'grew up' didn't allow casting on the surprise round - try that too.

[Grabgrub]

I recommend farming lots of XP and good equipment.

Good XP farming-spots are:

Murphy's Ghost (Floor 1) x10 Fights

Alarm Point (Floor 4) x50 Fights

Firedragon (Floor 7) x 30 till 50 Fights for Equip

then
Floor 9 for Hero-Level 13 & Equip

My main group is:
1x Fighter (Neutral) (a little mistake a evil fighter is better because "evil plate +3")
1x Samurai (Neutral) (for a neutral plate, can be use in a "good group" too)
1x Priest (Evil) (can take evil plate +3)
1x Thief (Evil) (for Traps, later to make Ninja)
1x Prophet (Evil) (to identify items & low spelllevel support)
1x Mage (Neutral), can be use in a "good group")

[Bugog]

You can always keep a save backup. When you get back to town backup your progress by quitting to main menu, copy your progress, and the load back into your main game.

If something goes too far off the rails you can enter reload the old game. Most people use this to some degree, because there's nothing worse than your main character getting permakilled during resurrection.

[Rishnix]

Originally posted by Stefan_Marley:

Honestly it doesn't sound like you're doing anything "wrong"; this game is the OG of cRPG's and as such it is BRUTAL. Really my only advice is even more patience; level 8 chars are (imo) just barely ready for level 4. As a suggestion - when your healer is down to half of his/her possible casts for healing spells start heading back to town so you can heal up if you get a random encounter/ambushed on the way back. There is tremendous debate on party make-up so I will just share what I usually go with: FIGHTER, SAMURAI, THIEF, PRIEST, MAGE, MAGE. Also, the version I 'grew up' didn't allow casting on the surprise round - try that too.

I guess I'll try getting rid of surprise round casting. I'm not sure that's been the real issue here, but sure. Why not at this point. Typical party comp for me feels so far removed from idealized since they keep dying no me. The last party had even lucked out and found some magic armor. A Plate Mail +1! I was thrilled! Now it's waiting for me on a corpse. I guess I'll just try grinding even more before going onto further floors. Maybe I need to make it level 8 for floor 3 and level 10 for floor 4. I had been using 2 levels per floor as a general rule of thumb, but clearly that's not enough.

Originally posted by Grabgrub:

I recommend farming lots of XP and good equipment.

Good XP farming-spots are:

Murphy's Ghost (Floor 1) x10 Fights

Alarm Point (Floor 4) x50 Fights

Firedragon (Floor 7) x 30 till 50 Fights for Equip

then
Floor 9 for Hero-Level 13 & Equip

My main group is:
1x Fighter (Neutral) (a little mistake a evil fighter is better because "evil plate +3")
1x Samurai (Neutral) (for a neutral plate, can be use in a "good group" too)
1x Priest (Evil) (can take evil plate +3)
1x Thief (Evil) (for Traps, later to make Ninja)
1x Prophet (Evil) (to identify items & low spelllevel support)
1x Mage (Neutral), can be use in a "good group")

My brother I am so far removed from those farming spots. It's the alarm point on the 4th floor that's been wiping me. I know about Murphy's Ghost and once guys hit level 5 or even 4, he becomes an easy enough win, if a little time consuming. I've mainly been cruising around on the 2nd floor looking for the possessed coin monsters. They come in packs of 18, are very weak, and give crazy good xp for their power.

Really though I'm finding what I need more than XP is gold. I feel like I'm always broke or saving up for the next resurrection. It sucks.

[gallaghan2000]

You're better off removing surprise round casting, by the bottom levels there's archmages and greater demons that'll get lucky and wipe parties out of that's not set.

The problem with the floors themselves are the status effects combined with auto kill critters. I got to the point that I skipped to floor 4 directly after Murphy using the elevator and just did the back and forth thing until I could handle the scripted fight on that level.


**
Party I recommend is: Priest, thief, priest, Bishop, mage, mage

Once Bishop has cure paralysis replace him with a samurai moved to the front and leave him (Bishop) in town for identification purposes (it takes a Bishop so long or so many levels to get level 7 spells that he's not worth it imo, way faster to class change a level 13 caster to the other class).


Once one of the priests can raise dead, replace him and leave the raise dead one in town.

Remember that the priests have bidial for the first level of the dungeon (which means no worries about missing targets) and by level 3 should have two ac increasing spells for combat.

Just don't get too far from the exit early on

[Abscondrel]

i avoid early wipes by using the starting party and introducing my level 1s, one at a time. the starting party is level 2. that difference of one level can be live or die. by the time i swap out the last one or two, i have some level 3s. and the starter party is slightly leveled as well. i don't delete them for a long time.

overkill the mobs until you know them well. leave the dungeon sooner to save rather than later when desperate.

[Guurt]

You are going too deep too fast.

Personally, I play it way more cautiously and don't go to level 4 until I am 6th level. I start with 3 level 1 fighters, a level 1 thief, and a level 1 mage and level 1 priest. These are just my infantry. They aren't meant to be my final characters. I use them to get some money and gear.... and if they die then they die... they are fodder.

Once they can survive then I start introducing my real characters into the back row to build them up for survival.

Having some tanks that can always stand in the front basically makes it impossible to die on the first 3 levels... don't take any characters to level 4 or below until they have enough hit points to suffer a surprise round (I play with surprise spells on).

My initial party is level 10 to 11 now and I am still finishing mapping level 5.

I played this when it was first released. I had dozens of parties wiped out. So I already knew to play very, very cautiously.

Once your crew all have +50 hit points then surprise rounds won't be so bad (well other than surprise ninja attacks).

Don't ever push your luck in Wizardry 1. The second something goes wrong then run away or go back to town and rest up. Slow and steady.

[zaiux1]

For a group with six Level 1 characters, I like 1 Fighter, 1 Priest, 1 Thief and 3 Mages. This is an easy group to level. You also need a Level 1 Bishop parked inside the maze at the stairs to identify what you find. Level everyone in this group to Level 13 and you can beat Werdna.

As was said in other posts, overkill until you know better ways to kill, be cautious, and refresh your characters frequently.

[Grabgrub]

My evil party was (all level 13) also completely wiped out in dungeon level 10. But I was able to save it a few days later with a new good party that I quickly brought up to level 11.
I always saved one evil member, so I had to go there 6 times.

The worst opponents are Demons, Mage Level 10 (you must kill them in Turn 1), Poison Giants & The Final Fight.

My Thief is now in rank1 with AC-2 (AC-4 with Dungeon-Armourparty-Spell) , and my Priest in rank2 for damagespells ect.
And my Thief use a antimage-sword.

[rn_archl0rd]

tiltowait and malikto are your friends. use them well.

[Segovax]

In the OG version on the IIgs, I had a group of level 15s that were getting slaughtered and I tried to run. The survivors were a Lord, Ninja and.. honestly I forget the third, but for some reason when they ran, I watched the hall zip by and then.. I was back in town with nobody like a TPK.

My next few parties were TPKs, and then finally I got down there with another group of 15s and...

There was Lord Cigarette Man and Ninja Buttface (Hey man I was like 8 or 9 years old). But Lord Cigarette Man was now Evil! They had the third guy who I forgot, and another group of monsters with them. My own former party proceeded to beat me down.

This game has always been very unforgiving. When you finally defeat it, it will feel good.

[Abscondrel]

Originally posted by Segovax:

In the OG version on the IIgs, I had a group of level 15s that were getting slaughtered and I tried to run. The survivors were a Lord, Ninja and.. honestly I forget the third, but for some reason when they ran, I watched the hall zip by and then.. I was back in town with nobody like a TPK.

My next few parties were TPKs, and then finally I got down there with another group of 15s and...

There was Lord Cigarette Man and Ninja Buttface (Hey man I was like 8 or 9 years old). But Lord Cigarette Man was now Evil! They had the third guy who I forgot, and another group of monsters with them. My own former party proceeded to beat me down.

This game has always been very unforgiving. When you finally defeat it, it will feel good.

that sounds like a weird bug. a version of this game that would turn PCs into mobs. that's a new one to me. having lost many parties in the apple version, i never saw that.

[Segovax]

Originally posted by Abscondrel:

Originally posted by Segovax:

In the OG version on the IIgs, I had a group of level 15s that were getting slaughtered and I tried to run. The survivors were a Lord, Ninja and.. honestly I forget the third, but for some reason when they ran, I watched the hall zip by and then.. I was back in town with nobody like a TPK.

My next few parties were TPKs, and then finally I got down there with another group of 15s and...

There was Lord Cigarette Man and Ninja Buttface (Hey man I was like 8 or 9 years old). But Lord Cigarette Man was now Evil! They had the third guy who I forgot, and another group of monsters with them. My own former party proceeded to beat me down.

This game has always been very unforgiving. When you finally defeat it, it will feel good.

that sounds like a weird bug. a version of this game that would turn PCs into mobs. that's a new one to me. having lost many parties in the apple version, i never saw that.

Yeah it was one time in the first game decades ago. Never was able to duplicate it. Getting my ass kicked by my own party was about the worst thing ever though.

[Star Paladin]

I have played XCom 1&2 Iron-man, but the rng in this game is SO unbalanced and outrageously swinging that I refunded. They greatly improved the graphics, but the 40+ year old game-play they left in the archaic, unbalanced state it was in.

[Segovax]

Originally posted by Star Paladin:

I have played XCom 1&2 Iron-man, but the rng in this game is SO unbalanced and outrageously swinging that I refunded. They greatly improved the graphics, but the 40+ year old game-play they left in the archaic, unbalanced state it was in.

I think missing 100% shots would be more unbalanced but you do you.