Well, I managed to get passed a variety of issues that drove me nuts to no end. Right now, most of my characters are heading towards level 7, except my Valkyrie who already achieved that level, and am experiencing what I call the mid-level blues of RPGs. With that in mind, I managed to do the bulk of the castle area, save anything requiring backtracking and am now on my way towards the Mines where fights are progressively getting tougher as a result of increasing numbers of enemies and the threat of one shots persist.
Unfortunately, as I got to this point, I was forced to die a few times in terms of individual characters due to some nasty fights. I figured the sacrifice would be worth it in the short term just to push on. In certain cases such as opening the Gold Box, I felt I had no other choice than to eat the trap and pray no one would be horribly affected. Same thing for a critical encounter where I ran out of patience knowing if I restarted it, I would have wasted valuable time.
That said, I’ve reached the juncture where I think it might be worth just sitting and spinning in the mountain zone because the encounters offer more experience than other spots. Also, at the cusp of level 7, I figure that unless I can push my levels a little higher, I’ll probably continue to struggle for a while as the difficulty of encounters increase. Most of what I’m looking to achieve though are improving some core skills like Skullduggery (which though trainable increases on its own at a snails pace vs the difficulty increase of most traps) and magic skills. In particular, magic skills are the most valuable thing in this mid level crisis because of the increased number of groups. So here, you really want to start obtaining group wide spells that don’t cost a lot but cut down on the time of grinding down monster packs. Level 3 spells like Fireball and Blades are highly valuable so the race to push skills into level 36 becomes imperative.
In my case, I’ve managed to set my Valkyrie up where I only push her Theology skill, which allowed her to pick up Blades. Unfortunately, her Earth spell pool is low so I can’t make effective use of that spell just yet. But I did want her to start earning points in Earth magic. The other skills I need to obtain soon for her are Cure Poison and Silence. I think Cure Poison is a must have to avoid carrying excessive potions and/or spending gold for such. While there are fountains that are accessible for handling such a thing, as one delves deeper into the Mines, I feel avoiding DoT type of damage is crucial.
Of course, that does leave my two Bishops with some problems where they lack group wide spells at the moment since their Theology and Thaumaturgy skills have been split up. However, I’m hoping that with the coming two levels, I’ll start having each focus a little more on one or the other. Like at least on Bishop ought to have Fireball while the other works on more curative and defensive spells. Ideally, I’ll have Blades, Fireball and Iceball reasonably soon since one should have a variety of elemental attacks in dealing with the various monsters’ resistances throughout the game.
For my Samurai, I’ve mostly dumped his skills into Thaumaturgy and am considering using his more as the party buff master, which would help reserve spell points on my Bishops’ behalves. This is a critical issue since his Oratory skill is quite low, making it likely that during a critical fight he will end up causing a spell to fizzle out. More importantly though, his Sword skill is near 100 which means he really ought to be focused on melee combat for a while. That said, I do place at least 1 point into Kirijitsu each time he levels because he simply doesn’t do enough damage on his own.
For my Monk, I’ve been very focused on getting her Ninjitsu skill leveled through auto-training. Currently, it’s in the 30s, which is okay but not reliable. But her Hand/Feet skills have not been great so I’m considering just having her focus on Melee combat for a while to train up her Hand/Feet combat as opposed to seeing her fail a good chunk of time in hiding. That said, I have been building up her Theosophy skill each level and recently acquired the Mind Attack spell. While the Mental Spell school isn’t the greatest, Psionic Blast and Mind Flay at later stages can be useful against certain monsters. Also, I’m hoping to have her be the one to receive the Sane Mind spell soon-ish. And she has received the Heal Wounds spell to help with healing outside of combat.
Finally, for my Ninja, he has been painful to level. But his combat has slowly become more reliable. I think his Hand & Feet skill is now above 50. However, his Ninjitsu skill feels bad. Also, his low hit points and bad AC make him a good target when his Ninjitsu fails. So one strategy I read was to have the Monk be more focused on Melee until the Ninja’s Ninjitsu are leveled up then swap. In that manner, the number of failures go down while you build up your melee. Because if you think about it, when you fail hiding in shadows, you also implicitly are preventing yourself from improving your melee since you’ll end up using the subsequent round as another attempt. So it’s really better to do one or the other when you have both types of characters. That said, the tiny amount of skill points I do receive generally go into Alchemy and Skulduggery. I did acquire the Poison spell as well as a Heal Wounds spell just to have a desperation healer. The Poison spell is there because the bulk of the Alchemist’s spells are the Air school so you want to start building up spell points early for that. Also, I’m hoping to have him eventually acquire the Cure Poison spell. It’ll be sometime before that happens but definitely worth it. After that, getting either Itching Skin or Acid Splash is important as Earth is an alchemist’s next most important school. Water and Mental are the lowest of my priorities just because other classes can do it better. I’ll only go for those as a Ninja/Alchemist when I’ve obtained the more critical spells/schools.
Finally, whatever remaining skill points goes into Kirijitsu. Kirijitsu can be built up over time one you gain that skill from a certain class. So even though it’s one of those “not trainable” skills, swapping professions down the road, which is an inevitability in this game, means you can continue dump spare points into that skill, especially if you’ve managed to master the other training/core skills for the new profession.
That said, I’m thinking of seeing if the Mountain area alone can help me get to level 8. The idea is to get to the point where I have 2 of my Bishops with group wide spells like Fireball and Blades. My Valkyrie can help down the line but will be focused on Curative in the meantime. Then I’m going to look for an old grinding spot that has high level encounters and see if I can grind out a lot of levels. I’m not 100% sure where this old spot was except that it involves a gate that I couldn’t get open as well as The Enchanted Forest area (based on the encounters I’ve seen). That was where I managed to push my old party to a very high level (until I got the cluebook to unjam myself).
But I know that if I can get this party say levels 13-15 without changing classes, then it’ll make the game much easier. From there, I can slowly migrate each character to a new class. I think getting each character Ninjitsu is imperative. It makes the final fight trivial since your party can hide from all the attacks. Similarly, being able to get more access to every school of magic per character is very useful as well as ensuring each character has the Kirijitsu skill. Based on this idea, most likely I’ll transition my Valkyrie first to another class. Probably, changing her to a Bard or Samurai might be the play and having my Samurai change to a Lord would allow them to swap gear. Having the Valkyrie become a Bard not only allows me to gain a new skill (Music) but receive Ninjitsu to allow her to start training up her hiding. The other thief skills aren’t as important. If not having her become a Bard, then a Ninja or Monk would be a good 2nd option as my Monk could become a Lord and they could swap gear.
I do think level 8-9 is the key for that grind though. Around that level, things get quite slow and the pacing isn’t great because your gear falls behind. So it’s more important to swap professions and start gaining new skills and spells before it becomes too difficult to catch up to an old class (where Wizardry 6 uses an AD&D approach to dual classing). It would be nice to see the old grinding spot again. I figure if I can survive a few key encounters, I might use that area to push my characters for a few levels and see how that goes.
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