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.
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.
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!
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
