Made some small progress prior to tomorrow’s Diablo 4 Season 7 launch on Wizardry 6. The big thing was getting through the bulk of the Mines under the Mountain area. I believe I managed to grab the bulk of the items (I could be missing the Miner’s Pick but I need to double check) and mostly have been grinding to level 9. However, the amount of experience required between 9 and 10 somewhat gruesome so I’m at a crossroads with the game as I call “the mid level blues.”
The Mines is one of the worst areas in the game in terms of the sheer number of stairs you need to keep track of unless you enjoy sheer insanity. There’s four levels on top (or rather under) of the Mountain zone and plenty of chaotic backtracking with your favorite annoyance in mind for old school CRPGs, yup you guessed it, darkness zones! Part of this part of the game reminds me of the worst parts of Bard’s Tale 2, namely Dargoth’s Tower where you had that horrible level of doors. When you go through situations like that, you really become appreciative of the modern approach to difficulty in games.
That said, I managed to crack the little wizard’s cave in a very literal manner, grabbed the Wizard’s treasure and went on to face the demonic spawn of the Hell Cat back in the bottom floor of the castle. After a few reloads in dealing with the trapped treasure chests, I managed to grab the goodies and quest-wise am looking to progress a little further into the Mountain. I know one major encounter coming up is the Toll Troll. Since I figured that encounter might be annoying, I decided to grind up a few levels where I got my characters to a comfortable level 9.
Part of the strategy here was to find a spot where I could just sit and spin until I got some decent encounters. The best spot that I should have used was this little room within that annoying darkness where a multi functional fountain that heals, rejuvenates stamina as well as magic points lie. In theory, I could bump up the difficulty a little and standing next to that spot and make an effort to hit level 10 but I want to try my hand at the Toll Troll next and see how I fare. I compared my progress with another person’s who had his entire game play uploaded to YouTube as well as narrated on his site. The main issue seems that I’m doing far less damage than him and am close to or a little under his level.
That said, I switched a few strategies around here and there in the meantime. For instance, I ended up focusing on my Monk for melee while my Ninja kept hiding in the shadows. That helped bolster my Hands & Feet skill for my Monk while my Ninja could be the one focused on Ninjitsu. With my Monk hitting level 100 in skill, I’ve decided to switch so that my Monk can work on her Ninjitsu so that my Ninja can push his Hands & Feet skill to 100. It may seem odd that I’ve done this but the idea is that I had been fumbling in not getting of a proper hide in shadows during combat frequent enough where my Monk and Ninja’s skills were lagging behind. So I figured that the better solution was to work on one person so I could at least get aid in combat while training my skills. Also, by doing this swap, now that my Monk has level 100 Hands & Feet, when she does successfully hide in the shadows, it means her attacks will be far more lethal and reliable.
Also, I’ve managed to get my Valyrie’s Polearm skill up to level 100. While she does not hit every single time, she is attacking at least twice a round now and sometimes hitting twice per attack. However, she has the best Theology skill in the party but her Oratory skill has been woefully low which means critical moments in certain battles may mean a tearful mishap (i.e. the spell fizzles). So when a fight isn’t as serious or I’m looking to put the final touches near the end of a battle, I’ve been having my Valkyrie cast a few Healing spells to train up her Oratory skills. I have given her both Whirlwind and Blades spells but haven’t used them as I’ve been waiting to get those spell pools up where she can effective as well as getting her Oratory to the upper 30s so that she’ll be effective as an offensive caster in the near future.
One thing I have been doing is looking ahead to what her next set of spells will be. Since her Theology is around the low 60s, I estimate that it’ll take at least two levels before she obtains the 5th level school of spells. That means, at level 10, she’ll only be able to choose from level 4 spells and below. Since I just obtained both Cure Poison and Whirlwind, I want to increase my Air spell point pool which has been low. So I’ll probably devote level 10 to Silence because it becomes incredibly useful from the mid point and beyond. Then once I get Theology to 75+, I’ll go for Purify Air. Lighting may sounds tempting because it’s Fire (Fire GOOD!) but her spell pool for Fire at that point would be too low to really be able to make use of that spell. Instead, Purify Air would be much better since I’ve run into encounters were low level Cure Poisons don’t work and either preempting poison clouds and the like or having a high level Cure Poison will be the way of survival.
Then there’s my Samurai, who has yet to really make an impact in spell casting. Unfortunately, his Oratory skills are only at 1 which makes me very hesitant to have him cast anything. I did pick up Fireball and probably will grab either Fire Shield or Ice Shield next time. But at this stage, I’m thinking he might serve a better purpose in being an out of combat buff spell caster. Spells like Direction are great for a class like the Samurai at lower levels since it’s cheap but helps save your offensive spell casters the hassle of juggling around too many spells at once.
My Monk is growing more exciting too as her Theosophy skill hit above 54, which means she has access to level 4 spells. In that, I picked up the big group Psionic spell of Psionic Blast. Unfortunately, her Mental spell pool is still low but I’ll probably continue dumping more Mental spells in the near future and let her be the specialist for high level mental spell casting.
My Ninja too gained a higher level of spell casting where his Alchemy hit above 18. It’s not great but I went with Blinding Flash since I wanted the spell points for Fire. Blinding Flash isn’t bad but he simply is too spell point starved right now to be useful as a caster. I did screw up and forget to put more points into Skulduggery but luckily at this moment, I haven’t seen any new trapped chests on the horizon. So I might pause a little bit on the trap disarmament and focus more on Alchemy (with a dash of Kirijitsu tossed in).
Finally, we have my elf Bishops. Originally, the plan was to make them more focused on individual schools in terms of their Academic skills. One would focus on Theology while the other handled magic. Unfortunately, I kinda forgot about that for one Bishop but it’s fine now. I might at least try to get both the Fireball spell. One has it and the other needs it. Same thing with Blades. Having multiple types of group offensive spells is critical during the midgame as more enemies will be lined up with massive separate groups and the only way to whittle them down especially with resistances is group effect spells. So you need different types to ensure not only you’ll have the spell power for it, but the types too for defeating resistant monsters.
With Diablo 4’s Season 7 coming up tomorrow (today?) I’ll probably keep Wizardry 6 on hiatus. I have a few ideas of what I’m going to play for Diablo 4 but honestly am more excited about playing Wizardry 6 at the moment. But we’ll see if my mood changes. The big problem with Wizardry 6 in comparison is that the game is tedious as a result of the old school dungeon crawl style. I have to constantly keep at least one monitor up to hold a map and various windows open to ensure that I can swap between info since no one has done a great job individually on writing a both good maps with proper markers and a well thought out flow chart. I won’t just because that’s not my business area but I will write my progress now and then because it is interesting.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.