#Wizardry8 – building our #Bard : the day the music(ian) killed

Who doesn’t want some music? Some use Spotify, some use Pandora, some use Apple Music or Google Play. We won’t. We shun all these wimps. We choose a bard: The prime difference being that what on earth can you kill with Spotify et al.? Nothing. What can you kill with a Wizardry 8 Bard? Quite some things! And you get her music for free.

Our Bard will also be a melee combatant, but with nice buffs and some area DPS at the beginning. Bards are getting quite nice items, that will help with their lower range of combat skills and weapons. And we will make use of the many instruments lying around practically everywhere in Wizardry 8.

Building the melee bard is practically doing the same thing we already did with Monk / Samurai / Valkyrie: Rising Strength > Speed > Dexterity > Vitality. But there is a difference this time. We are going to use a Lizard-Woman for the job. Why? We won’t ever need magic and Lizards have pretty sexy combat stats (very high Vitality and Strength) – so, no bonus points at the start. But pretty nice numbers all around:

bard-lizardman

We will have to get rid of the negative points first before we can put some points into the precious melee stats. But that’s no problem as our bard is built to fit nicely into a party where Conan would be just one of the guys, you know.

For skills, we are going to put points into Music, Communication and Artifacts. The good combat skills will have to be earned by practice and our nice attributes. Artifacts is pretty helpful for early identification of items, Music is the core skill of the Bard – his instruments – and communication will help massively with shop prices. Something that helps really much in the beginning. Less farming needed for more items. Go, my charming Iguanodon!

bard-combatskills

Iguanodon? You already knew that’s the guy from the featured image. They are rumored to having sung songs as one of the fewer dinosaur species. What a nice Lizard-Girl in the choir:

bard-character

Kindly, I will leave for today. We will meet again soon though, presenting our 6th member of the infamous party.

Happy gaming!

Immanuel-Can

Skyrocketing #Wizardry8 #DPS with a #Dwarven #Valkyrie !

You could guess I only want a divine character as a healer. Or for the precious buffs. Resurrections. No – DPS is also great for the Valkyrie, especially to bridge the midgame. But also because she is specialized in Polearms. And there are some pretty good polearm weapons late in the game.

As with the previous melee characters (Monk and Samurai) our ability priority will be Strength (melee damage and armor penetration final skill) > Speed (number of attacks and initiative) > Dexterity (to hit and AC) > Vitality (hit points in melee are never bad).

You can always argue that Senses or Intelligence are listed under combat skills but they only make you learn the skills a little faster – their endgame final skills (unlocked after you reach 100 Senses or Intelligence) are pretty much useless for a melee character, so we are ignoring these on purpose.

So let’s make our girl strong, quick and dextrous – who wouldn’t want such a bodyguard girlfriend? (especially as a stereotypical nerd 😀 )

valkyrie-dwarf

And she’s a dwarf, too. The damage resistance is always cool for a melee character and the piety won’t hurt for some nice extra heals (piety raises spellpoints and stamina).

Combat skills are pretty straightforward, too: Polearm and Close Combat. We won’t need more. For some ranged damage, if we really happen to get two Tripleshot Crossbows, we’ll put the rest of the points into them (Level 5 upwards these points will go into spellcasting).

valkyrie-combatskills

Her name is gonna be Brunhilda after her famous namesake from the Nibelungenlied whose combat skills were so legendary that she could even wrestle with the uber-strong Dragon Slayer Siegfried.

Yes, another aggressive character. But what are you going to do in combat? Bake bread and pick flowers?

valkyrie-character

Better pick up some kills. Yes Madam. She won’t have a problem with that.

See you soon for party member 5! Happy gaming,

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry8 : Building an effective #DPS #Ranger

After having built the core style components of our team (SHREDDER THEM!), let’s go to a class you definitely do want in your party. The ranger. He can scout automatically which is a big bonus and has high quality of life. I’d recommend the ranger to every new player’s party of Wizardry 8 just because you will not have to turn “Scouting” on and off. And even if you know the location of every hidden item it’s still really tedious if you don’t have a ranger.

So, take one. There’s no doubt: He’s useful. He can heal a bit, and teleport too in high levels. Can mix potions with his alchemy skill.

And he does tons of damage in the late game, and is still pretty OK early. If you build him right.

In order to achieve a non-balanced offensive ranger with high ranged damage, we are going to buy points in the following priority: Senses (for the final skill Eagle Eye, recommended for late game ranged damage) > Strength (for additional ranged damage and the eventual melee encounter) > Speed (for additional attacks) > Dexterity (for better to-hit and a quality of life Armor Class final skill later).

One of the best, if not the best ranger is a Mook: He has most bonus points, and is even one size category larger than the other choices, so he will have access to a nice late game sword: The Giant’s Sword, with extended range – furthering his DPS role even if the enemies come close.

ranger-mook

The skill category is pretty straightforward: We want him to kill with ranged weapons – bows. A crossbow, and hopefully a tripleshot crossbow later will be our favored weapon. Additional points are spent for scouting, so we won’t miss items.

ranger-combatskills

For his Gorillalike looks, I have baptised our furry ranger Silverback, in short: Silver. Whatever comes his way, he will drop them like flies.

ranger-character

Bonus points for recognizing the Statue up above I used as a featured image 🙂

Happy gaming! See you,

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry 8: Building an offensive melee #Monk

Similar to the offensive Samurai, we are going to build an offensive melee monk, also female, for Stamina item reasons at the start!

We are going to put points into Strength > Speed > Dexterity > Vitality.

Race choice: As the Monk class needs high piety (50), we will go with the bonus point rich and balanced Human race. Her name, honoring “the way”, will be Taoia.

monk-human

We’re going to use her martial arts skills to the fullest and ignore the stealth skill (it will only provide armor – pretty useful, but hey, we are aggressive!)

Different to the samurai, we also have points for critical strike, which will make her lack of good weapons at the start pretty bearable.

 

 

monk-combatskills

..and let me say she’ll have good looks! She is ready for anything: And aggressive to boot (ready for the -kicking!)

monk-character

With the Samurai she makes the “Destructive Duo” of our party. The “shredder” component if you like – the reason why our tactical concept most times will be: Run in and let the shredders do their work: Double hit and crit – unstoppable (by blindness /Monk , or by fear / Samurai).

Prepare for more – or build your own party and post it!

See you for Member 3 next time,

Immanuel-Can

Welcome to the #Wizardry Party, #Samurai #Musashi !

The first member of our party is going live, the most aggressive too, the Samurai!

To the honor of Miyamoto Musashi, we will call her Musashi, after one of the most famous Samurai – a double blade swordsman from the 17th century: Now going to the stars!

How are we going to build Musashi in Wizardry 8? As I already wrote earlier, there are so many possibilities to create viable characters in the game.

For the Samurai class, these choices would be:

  • Melee oriented with minimal Magic for quality of life buffs
  • Magic oriented with combat stats for better defense
  • A hybrid of the two, going offensive
  • A hybrid of the two, going defensive
  • …and possibly many more

For a high DPS endgame party, we will go for a melee Samurai and use magic to provide utility and buffs. For fun we will make her as offensive as possible. She is fearless (immune to fear effects) after all and won’t complain!

We will need:

  • High Strength
    Strength guarantees melee damage, and this is what we are going to need. Also, it provides stamina which is fueling melee attacks. Finally, when we reach 100 Strength we will have access to Power Strike, a special skill to penetrate the enemies’ armor even more. The increased carrying capacity is a nice bonus.
  • High Speed
    Speed guarantees more attacks and a higher initiative. Additionally, it helps to trigger “Lightning Strike”, a special attack of the Samurai where he attacks 4 times instead of only one time. Also, high speed grants some armor. Finally, when we reach 100 Speed we will get a special ability granting Avoidance which is really helpful to avoid malicious effects in melee combat.
  • High Dexterity
    Dexterity provides a bonus to “to hit” as well as armor class. Its final ability grants even more armor.
  • (late game) Vitality
    As we go for a victory as quickly as possible, we will postpone this ability until very late in the game. Vitality is pretty straightforward an ability granting HP and Stamina, as well as carrying capacity. It helps much with survival.

As a race we will go for the most (melee) combat oriented race in Wizardry: Its weak magical abilities give it more points for melee. The Hobbit! A female hobbit for.. well, powergaming! We will need much stamina, and stamina regenerating items are easier to access for female characters at the start of the game.
samurai-hobbit

For the start, we want her to have great Sword skills as well as Dual Weapons and Close Combat. At the beginning of the game it is more important to hit the opponents opposed to critting them – they will have so few hitpoints that they will quickly die through a much easier hit. A crit isn’t of that much benefit, so we will raise that skill later. The blue color of the Sword skill marks the class skill of the samurai: We will get a 25% bonus on the skill in game, it will apply 125% of its skill number – which is really helpful as fighting with dual weaponry gives a malus.

samurai-combatskills

As for the Magic: The Samurai cannot do magic off the bat. It will have to wait until the 5th level where we are going to talk about magic and its specialization for the Samurai in Wizardry 8.

Now imagine a female version of Musashi – you have quite a few portraits, but I like a more calm one, staying concentrated in the heat of the battle. Her intentions are to go for the great enlightenment – to beat any opponent even before the battle!

samurai-character

When the party is starting (on YouTube), you’ll be able to hear the voices of the characters in game, commenting on the events happening in game. It is always fitting, funny, and actually making you like your characters much more.

Such a masterwork!

Let’s get it on – happy to see you at Party Member 2

Immanuel-Can

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