2024 Wizardry redo, first time since 1980's

[130s]

Been playing PlayStation5 version of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord https://github.com/kinu-garage/30y-130s_life/issues/2063#issuecomment-2324680861, initially w/boys but now by myself for now. Logging progress and thoughts.

[130s]

1st party was exterminated in the Control Center in 4f. Now raising a 2nd party to defeat the guardians at the center. Initial plan is to rescue the dead party after that.

• L9 fighters x 2, L9 evil thief, L9 priest, L8 bishop, L9 mage
  • Censi a dwarf fighter is strong.
  • The thief is evil and planned to convert to a ninja, expecting to free up party slot for offense and chest opening.
• High Priest and the folks surprised us, physical attack by L7 Fighters, High Ninja was already huge.
  • I guess it only took 2 or 3 more turns in addition to surprise turn. I already forgot a lot but my 6-yr child remembered lahalito killed some of our back players.
• 1st party still remains there, dead. I disabled the PS5 version's Wizardry feature where a dead person in the dungeon would get affected by the natural events e.g. rotten or damaged by creatures, items stolen, over the time.
• Initial plan, which I'm still on, is to raise a 2nd party. Some members are uniquely in need for my current plan.
• I just had a mage in 2nd party, Eldred, turned to ash at temple...Recruited at the tavern, grew to L9 mage, he was very effective in the 4F fights, but killed almost out of blue by the combo of Priestesses and either Gas Dragons or Dragon Puppies (again I don't exactly remember what happened in the fight)...Having someone to ash is the 1st experience both in PC8801 and PS5 version. On PC8801 I was just doing floppy disk trick to cancel undesired event, but on PS5 I decided to embrace the reality, partly because to share those as an experience w/my children.

[130s]

Been awhile, my party slowly progressed.

• 1st party rescued.
• 8F is finished exploring.
• Current party:
  • L13 (L12?) N-Fighter Dalilah
    • 1 more parameter needed before becoming eligible for Samurai.
  • L13 E-Fighter Ingo
    • 14? 12? more parameters needed before becoming eligible for Ninja.
  • L10 N-Samurai Censi
  • L12 E-Thief Charg
    • 23? parameters needed before becoming eligible for Ninja.
  • L12? G-Priest Ponette
    • Bishop eligible.
    • 13? parameters needed before becoming eligible for Lord.
  • L12 N-Mage Anna
    • Bishop eligible.
• Want a Ninja soon.
  • Opt-a. Ingo to be a Ninja
    • A few more higher levels needed at least.
    • 👍 Potentially much sooner to become eligible before Charg would be so.
    • :?: Unclear chest disarming ability. Would we keep Charg as a Thief after Ingo turn to a Ninja? Maybe before we're confident with her chest disarming ability.
  • Opt-b. Charg to be a Ninja
    • 👎 Pontially almost double amount of time needed cmopared to Opt-a.
• Want a Bishop, and a Lord soon.
  - 👍 Probably continued to be good (enough) at disarming chests.
  • :?: If we get a Lord NOT by converting any of our front 3 persons, then we'd have 4 front-capable persons so I'd have to choose one to go to the back row.
    • Maybe it's ok to have a Lord in the back row.
  • Why do I want a Lord?
    • Want multiple Priest spell casters.
    • Lord's Garb. Can't be unworn if found.
  • Opt-a. Convert Ponette to a Lord, Anna to Bishop?
    • Need another Priest spell caster as a relief.
      • Alena (backup L9 G-priest) to join?
      • 👎 9F is too dangerous with her before she learns a lot.
      • Who would leave the part then?
        • When a ninja can disarm chests reliably, then a thief can leave.
    • Recruit? If there can be a L10+ priest found, we can do that?
    • Needs another mage spell caster as a relief.
      • 2ndary mage spell caster knowing L5 mage spell is ideal (Censi only knows L3 now).
  • Opt-b. Convert Ingo to a Lord?
    • 👎 Unknown when it can be realized. Turning evil to good hasn't happened yet even with many times of leaving friendly enemies.
  • Opt-c. Convert Alena to a Lord?
    • 👎 Same concern remains as Opt-a i.e. Who'd be pushed out of the party by adding a new member.
    • Alena has much lower HP than Ponette regardless the level.
• Conclusion for now regarding classes:
  • Wait for the members to gain a few more levels before class changes.

[130s]

Wizardry by DigitalEclipse often, not many times though, gets stuck. No key for the game seems to invoke anything to escape that situation. Sometimes game recovers, but sometimes it remains stuck before I reboot PS5.
PS5 button on the handheld controller toggles the PS5 menu w/o a problem so it's likely Wizardry issue.

Exploring 9f, our thief failed to disarm chests 3 times out of 4...and the trap on 4th one, Anti-Priest, hit him hard and killed him...Agility 15 or 16, luck 16 or something like that may be too low? IDK.

[130s]

Update

• Class change and re-organization of the party finished I think.

  Class	Name	Level	Lv divine spell, Tier num	Lv Arcane spell, Tier num	Special role if any	Comment
  Samurai	Censi	L14	-	L4, 3	--	-
  Samurai	Dalilah	L13	-	L4, 3	--	-
  Ninja	Ingo	L11	-	-	Primary and only chest disarmer	Owns Shuriken.
  Lord	Nelly	L10	L4, 3	-	One of 3 chest inspectors (by Calfo)	-
  Bishop	Anna	L12	L3, ?	L7, 3?	Primary arcane (offense) spell caster. One of 3 chest inspectors (by Calfo)	-
  Bishop	Ponnet	L10	L7, 2	L3, 2	Primary healer, one of 3 chest inspectors (by Calfo)	-

  • Last fighter now converted to Ninja.
  • Priest, at L16, converted to a Bishop.
  • Thief is dismissed, swapped with a recently-recruited Lord.
• Thievery tactics change
  • Previously a thief dedicated to be in charge of inspecting and disarming chests. He activated trap MANY times (often killing himself as well as causing significant damages to the party).
    • Later we figured out what's bad is his inspection particularly in the lower floors (According to " The not-so-basic mechanics of Wizardry", maze floor does affect the disarming but not the inspection 🤔
  • New plan: Test proved that our Ninja is terrible at inspection (blew off the trap at the inspection multiple times) but disarming is not bad. Based on that test, I swapped a thief with a then-L8 Lord who already knew up to L3 divine spells, i.e. she already knew Calfo, which is guaranteed 95% centainty (According to the same blog post). With this,
    • Chest inspector: Charg + Ponnet (Calfo) --> 3 Calfo casters
    • Chest opener: Chart (thief) --> Ingo (Ninja)
• Notable enemies, battles:
  • Have never won Greater Demons yet when they come in a group (along with Ninjas). There's no way our esp. back row members could survive 3 x Madalto.
  • Ma/Haman has never executed the slience-the-enemy option so far.
    • B/c I've never been successful in farming Greater Demons so far, I began slightly to doubt if that's not possible with the DigitalEclipse version, which is based on the original Apple version IIRC (was that possible only on Japanese version?)
      • Nope, there's a post that mentions that (rpgcodex.net).

        IIRC Haman and Mahaman effects can't be resisted. That's how you farm Greater Demons in Wiz 1 (Haman to silence the Greater Demons so they can't spam Madalto).

  • Dragon Zombie: Even just with 2 of them, I got someone killed (I guess we were already lower HP, then got Lahalito).
  • Maelific drained 3 levels? I'm not sure.
  • Lv10 Mages cast Madalto. Other than magic spell, they're weak but if any of them cast it earlier than us...