Wizardry 8 - The Solo Fairy Guide
---------------------------------
Version 1.1
Submitted 4-22-03
by Mask of Winters (
[email protected])
WARNING: This guide contains spoilers.
Table of Contents
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1.0 Introduction
2.0 Why, Why, Why?
3.0 Character Creation and Planning
4.0 A Beginner's Guide to Suriviving the First Hours of Tedium
5.0 Arnika: The Legend Continues
6.0 Do-It-Yourself Progress Report
7.0 Tryton: Making the Most of Trynnie Misery
8.0 Rounding out the Spellbooks
9.0 Into the Big, Bad World
10.0 Credits and Whatnot
11.0 Summary of Version Changes
For easy navigation just do a text search for the heading listed above; it'll
take you straight to the part you want.
1.0 Introduction
----------------
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms
of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance
with us.
--Maurice Maeterlinck
A little bored of Wiz8 on Expert, a little fed up with dying to bugs in Iron
Man, I decided to see what could be done as far as putting myself through
considerable hell with just one little character instead of the usual
party-party-party! style of play.
And I thought, what one little character could be littler than a fairy? I'm
aware that the game spells it Faerie but I am both conventional and lazy in
my appellations.
I must admit that I am so far not terribly progressed in my solo adventure, but
I am more than willing to document my experiences to this point, so that
others may follow in my footsteps and avoid making the same mistakes I have.
One final note: this is my very first FAQ. Be gentle.
2.0 Why, Why, Why?
------------------
Do me a favor. Just kick my ass, okay? Kick this ass for a man, that's all.
Kick my ass. Enjoy. Come on. I'm not asking, I'm telling with this. Kick
my ass.
--Artie Fufkin
I know there are probably a lot of whys out there, and I promise I'd love to
get to all of them... but I'm only going to address the ones I consider
important.
2.1 Why a fairy?
I consider the fairy to be a great solo character for several reasons.
A fairy starts the game with considerable resists to both Divine and Mental
realms of magic, meaning that later when you're fighting Death Knights and
Nightmares the chances of Death Wish or the dreaded "Nightmare rears back!"
actually affecting your character are substantially lower. The fairy also
has no negative resists. As you can tell I am somewhat paranoid about magic
damage; I base this on my experience with the game. I, like you, have never
actually had my party wiped out by physical attacks except with my very first
party where I had no idea how to beat a pack of Juggernauts and was soundly
trounced. I've learned a lot since then, and the summary of it is this: it
is easy to beat anything that isn't being helped out by casters.
2.2 But you're a fairy. By herself. How can you ignore physical damage when
your max HP is so low?
I promise it will all make sense when we get to character creation.
2.3 Will this eat up countless hours of my precious time?
Oh yes. But that's why you're doing it, isn't it?
3.0 Character Creation and Planning
-----------------------------------
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell
of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
--E. B. White
Let's get to the goods and outline my plan for Ultimate Fairy Badass. Having
already decided race, and knowing that Profession will require a lengthy
discussion, I will skip straight to gender, for which I will be putting F.
For Female. Like on a driver's lisence. I put female to ensure that I can
use the super-amazing, stamina regenerating, Locket of Reflection. Stamina
Regeneration will be important for all the running I plan to be doing, not to
mention the fact that one character fighting and dodging every creature alone
will need massive amounts of the stuff if she doesn't plan on casting Stamina
every six or seven rounds.
I can also breifly touch on the subject of voice. Pick one you like. It'll
be the only one you hear during the entire game. Granted, you can always
change it mid-game, but if you stick to just one you will get to hear every
quote said by your voice. In fact... for my next FAQ... I may just do a
"Every Quote By Every Voice" FAQ. Now that'll be a considerable exercise in
time wasting. Because she amuses me I believe I'll go with the Southern
Belle for now.
So. Profession. Normally when you play through Wizardry 8 you assign each
character a profession and stick do it. There's really no point to changing
class before level 18 for pure spellcasters or 22 for hybrid spellcasters.
18 and 22 are the levels at which a character gains access to its most
powerful magic, if you don't know the significance of those numbers.
As a solo character, though, I believe dual classing will be very much called
for, and starting as early as level eight. Here's why. My Fairy will be
starting off as a Ninja. I must have Cane of Corpus (dropped when you kill
Don Barlone or pickpocketed from him if you've got a ridiculously high
pickpocket skill); the 15% kill rate is just too juicy to say no to. A
ninja can also train in all the most useful non-combat skills, Locks & Traps
and Pickpocket, and begins with what I am considering the cornerstone of my
anti-phyiscal damage protections: Stealth. For those of you unfamiliar with
Stealth, or anybody looking to find out exactly what it does, Stealth adds 1
to your AC for every 10 points of skill.
Stealth goes up whenever your character is under attack. As a solo character,
your stealth skill, properly fed, will skyrocket. We will speak of proper
feeding in the next section.
The Ninja also gets the glorious Critical Strike. Compound a high CS skill
with the Cane of Corpus (CoC) and you should be getting Instant Kills every
fight. Or so goes the plan.
My Fairy will immediately change class to Bishop on reaching level eight, and
will stay a Bishop until she has attained 18 levels in it. Maxing out every
spell realm will further increase her natural spell resistances as well as
ensuring the Fairy will get all the important buffing spells (Armorplate,
Missle Shield, Magic Shield, X-Ray, Enchant Weapon, Detect Secrets, etc).
After 18 levels of Bishop, the Fairy will switch back to Ninja and stay
there until endgame.
A brief review of the importance of attributes: A high Speed will add to AC
and ensure I go first in every round, in addition to giving me more Swings
per Attack. A high Dex will eventually unlock the Reflexion skill which
will further enhance my AC, as well as giving me more Attacks per round.
Strength is important for damage (+2% damage for every point of Strength over
50!) and, along with Dexterity, is a controlling attribute for Staves & Wands,
which my Ninja Bishop will be using extensively. (For those who aren't in the
know: Controlling Attributes affect how quickly a character can increase a
skill. Higher Controlling Attributes mean quicker skill mastery. You can
find out what Attributes are linked to what Skills by right-clicking a skill
and reading its description.) Intelligence and Piety are the only two mental
attributes I will be investing in, and only because of their importance as
Controlling Attributes for the casting skills. A more patient man would rank
Vitality over either of them as higher Vitality will give your fairy more
Hitpoints per level and eventually give you the Iron Skin skill, which reduces
physical damage even further. I say more patient because magic skills can be
easily maxed out early if you're willing to do it with low controlling
attributes... it just takes a long time. Levels you gain while missing
Vitality, however, are squandered, as points invested in Vitality are not
retroactively added to your Hitpoint total on a per-level basis. Senses I
feel comfortable ignoring; searching can be handled with Detect Secrets and
the Expert Skill linked to Senses, Eagle Eye, only affects ranged combat.
One side note: Your ninja will need a Piety of 55 to become a Bishop. The
highest Piety a fairy ninja can start with is 38. This means you'll need to
cover a 17 point deficit in the Piety department, and put 3 of your attribute
points into it every level for six levels before you qualify. You'll also
need Intelligence 55. You can start with 52, making Intelligence an easy base
to cover. Go ahead and pump Intelligence until your Intelligence is 95. Why
95? There's a fountain in Trynton which will give you +5 Intelligence if you
answer its riddle correctly (so far I know it takes "memory" and
"experience"), so there's no point spending those last 5 when you'll get them
for free anyway.
So. Name your Fairy. I will offer no advice here.
The next point to consider is one of pride. How much do you have? If you're
truly hardcore about this, you will immediately begin your Wizardry 8
adventure with a party of but a single, lonely fairy. The easier route
involves you making several other fairies and looting them for all their
starting equipment, which will net you 2 Light Heal potions, 5 Fairy Dust, a
Fairy Stick, U/L Gossamer Robes and a Dagger per extra fairy. I personally
created one extra Fairy, a Priest, which I will explain later. On with the
show.
4.0 A Beginner's Guide to Suriviving the First Hours of Tedium
--------------------------------------------------------------
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard
work.
--Peter Drucker
Welcome to the vast and dizzying world of Wizardry 8, Solo Style.
You're on a beach with 3 crabs and a chest in front of you. The first thing
I did was to change my formation; the Ninja I sent to the very front, and the
priest, the very back. I then went to the options menu, chose "Novice"
difficulty, and set the combat speed to max. Next, I opened my inventory,
set the fairy ninja to dual wield fairy sticks and put all the light heal and
stamina potions in her personal inventory. That done, I looted the chest
and lucked out: 5 Heavy Heal potions. I gave those to my nymphet as well.
Then I went downstairs and grabbed a Pepsi. You should do this, too. A
wise man will also grab something to snack on, a cd to listen to, a book to
read, some pr0n, whatever will keep you occupied for the next few hours. Once
you're ready, save, and start a fight with those three crabs.
Immediately put the ninja and the priest on defend and back yourself into a
corner so that the three crabs can only attack the ninja. Your task for the
next few hours--maybe less depending on the quality of your computer--is to
sit there in Continuous Combat mode while the crabs try to kill your ninja.
They will hit somewhat often for the first 10 rounds; use the Priest to cast
Heal Wounds on the ninja. The other advantage to making the priest a fairy,
in addition to the extra starting equipment for the ninja, is that the priest
will regenerate magic points all by himself, meaning the priest will be able
to heal the ninja over and over and over again. In fact, just press "L" while
the fight rages on and the priest will repeat (L)ast action, meaning he'll
heal the fairy and then default back to defend. Yay! After about 10 rounds
the crabs will run out of stamina and start falling asleep after every few
swipes at you. That's fine. You now have the advantage of max stamina vs
minimum stamina; that is, your dodging ability is at its peak, while the
crabs' attack value is at its low. Keep healing the ninja with the priest
while you rock out to your new cd, read your book, watch your pr0n, whatever.
You don't even have to watch the screen, just wait until you hear the ninja
complain about getting beat up, and press L. Should it ever happen that the
priest hasn't yet recovered enough Spell Points to cast Heal Wounds on the
ninja, have the ninja use one of the healing potions you put in her inventory.
Simple. After what seems like an eternity your nymphet ninja will have 100
in her Stealth skill, raising her Base AC to 12! (Stealth bonus 10 plus small
size bonus 2).
Now we go from Chillin' to Illin'. Swap the combat formation of the priest
and the ninja and let the crabs annihilate your priest. My priest was male
and I used this as an excuse to do some nerdy mental roleplaying where my
ninja swore to hunt down whoever blew up the ship and take revenge for the
loss of her beloved priest companion. Your milage may vary.
Once the priest bites it, swap positions again and hand those crabs a
righteous beatdown.
The rest of the monastery is a cakewalk. You are for the most part
untouchable to these things; the only encounter that gave me trouble was the
Gregor because it took so long.
Be sure to grab the Ring of Protection in the jailcell with the Rapax
Skeleton. Base AC 13.
Well, we're set for now. Remember not to pick anything up that will encumber
your fairy. Sell everything you don't need to Burz before you leave. A
proper combing over of the Monastery will get you the following spellbooks
for free: Light, Stamina, Bless, Divine Trap.
Leave the Monastery and book it for Arnika. Pick your fights carefully along
the way and try to get your level/piety high enough to switch class to Bishop.
Once you attain Bishop status, do not select any spells. This is imperative.
As you continue to level in Bishop, save those spell picks. You can buy just
about every spell in the game except those from levels 6 and 7, and since you
want those spells, you'll be saving your spell picks for them. Also, as you
level your Bishop, make sure that your magic schools always rank so that the
following equation is true
Divinity > Psionics > Alchemy > Wizardry
As long as they run from highest to lowest in that order we will be able to
power train each of the primary magic schools, except Wizardry... which is
okay, considering we'll be using Wizardry for damage output until we get back
to being a ninja. It will increase naturally. And you can always increase
your Wizardry with level points, too, later.
5.0 Arnika: The Legend Continues
--------------------------------
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want
to see the manager."
--William S. Burroughs
Save before talking to each NPC and pickpocket her until she catches you,
then reload and pickpocket one less than that many times. Do this for the
rest of the game, and repeat it every time you return to a town. Pickpocket
training: arduous, but rewarding. Note, of course, that as long as you are
a Bishop your pickpocket skill won't actually increase, but it's good to get
in the habit early, and you will occassionally pull gold off NPCs even with
your low pickpocket skill.
Head straight for Anna and buy the following spellbooks: Charming (Charm),
Knocks (Knock Knock) and Mindread (Mindread). Save. We will now train
Divinity. Assuming Divine is higher than Alchemy--and it should be, because
we've been making sure of this, haven't we?--you can sit there and cast
Charm on Anna until your Spell Points run dry, rest, and repeat. Max out
your Divinity. This will take some time. Now go ahead and do the same thing,
only this time, cast Mindread. Repeat this process until you have Divinity,
Psionics, and the Mental realm all raised to at least 90. Benefits: You'll
be able to cast Divine and Psionic spells at the earliest possible levels,
having two more of your spell realms at maximum value will get you a crazy
amount of Spell Points, and, of course, maxing out your Mental realm means
your Mental Resistance will skyrocket, too.
This takes forever, and requires considerably more effort to train than it
did to train your Stealth up. In all reality you will swear you can feel the
process eating away at your will to live. All I can say is suck it up.
In case you're curious, here's how you can tell whether or not you qualify to
cast a spell:
SL LL RQ In other words, to learn a level 2 Divine spell,
1 1 0 our fairy needs to have 3 Levels of Bishop, and
2 3 15 a Skill Level of at least 15.
3 5 30
4 8 45 This table is only for pure spellcasting classes,
5 11 60 and is inaccurate for Fighter/Casters such as
6 14 75 Ninja, Monks, Samurai, and the rest.
7 18 90
SL - Spell Level
LL - Level Learnable (Your Bishop Level must equal or exeed this)
RQ - Required Skill Level (School + [Realm/10])
If you have any money left, buy a book of Insanity from Anna. Remember, if
you can't find the spellbooks, either A. your level is too low, which can be
easily remedied by starting fights with the Savant Henchmen in town and
letting the Higardi Patrols do your dirty work, or B. they're just not in the
shopkeeper's inventory at the moment. You can reload Anna's stock buy buying
a few bundles of her worthless arrows and resting 24 hours.
Head to the Prison building. Use Myles to pick the locks if the combination
of Knock Knock and your own (low) Locks & Traps skill prove insufficient to
open the doors. Snag Marten's Badge and then, in the jail area, open the
middle room, punch a hole in the floor, and follow that path to the 8 tumbler
bank vault lock. Watch out for the slime in the tunnel; it occasionally gets
a lucky shot in.
Now sit there and cast knock knock on that vault door until your Alchemy and
Earth skills peak at 100. Max Earth realm will increase your Earth
resistance. Max Alchemy will enable you to create all the potions and dusts
in the game, as well as adding Spell Points to every realm to cast with.
What you have at this point is a spellcaster with 3 maxed out spellcasting
schools: Alchemy, Divinity and Psionics. Your Mental and Earth realms are at
max, too. Here are some spells you can cast to raise your Wizardry school and
the 4 realms we've ignored, listed with the spell levels they require:
Air - Missle Shield(2), Shadow Hound(3), Asphyxiation(7)
Divine - Enchanted Blade(2), Magic Missles(2)
Fire - Energy Blast(1), Fireball(3), Firestorm(6), Nuclear Blast(7)
Water - Frost(1), Freeze Flesh(3), Iceball(4), Dehydrate (5), Freeze All(5),
Blizzard(6)
For the record, these are now the only spells you can cast that will improve
your Wizardry skill... so get cracking.
Do all the usual Arnika stuff. You may feel a slight twinge of pain when you
realize you'll get more good out of Bloodlust by selling it than you will by
keeping it. I did. Don't leave here until you've purchased all the spells
you can.
Braffit: Angels, Banish, Blessings, Disease Cures, Enchantment, Healing,
Missles, Paralysis Cures, Poison Cures, Removal, Resting (although, since
this only teaches you Rest All, you can probably skip it), Screens, Souls,
Wounding.
Anna: Charming, Detection, Holding, Insanity, Knocks, Mindread, Relics,
Resting (again, skippable), Terror, Traps.
Buy whatever provisions you feel you need and get ready to hit Trynton.
6.0 Do-It-Yourself Progress Report
----------------------------------
I used to think every day I didn't wake up and gargle a few rounds from a
revolver was a victory, but little "golden" moments like this make me wonder,
"a victory for who?"
--Mike O'Toole
Here I'd like to impart a little more advice on the allocation of levelling
points. Dumping 3 into Wizardry whenever possible will get you to max
quicker than expected. Knowing that you're going to switch back to Ninja,
however, you may want to consider this: Your spell realms (Earth, Fire, etc)
will continue to rise as a Ninja casting spells. Therefore, you don't really
need to put any points into them. You can... but you don't need to. What
might be occurring to you at this point though is that you're going to be
changing to Ninja with a total character level of 26. At that point you'll
be fighting level 26 mobs with a ninja who fights with a character level of
7--your Ninja level.
With that in mind, you may want to stick points into Close Combat and Wands &
Staves. Increasing these skills will give your Ninja more attacks, and more
swings per attack. Combined with 100 Dex and 100 Speed, we should be able to
produce a ninja who can get in at least 9 swings a round.
You may also want to consider training Reflexion to 100 when you get it.
Reflexion 100 will get you a base AC bonus of 6, raising our unarmored,
natural AC to 18 (Stealth 10, Reflexion 6, Size 2). 100 Speed will add
another 4 to that for a total of 22. That's really, really high. Especially
considering we're not even accounting for armor. You can train Reflexion the
same way you trained Stealth: find a melee only enemy and hunker down. You
can now have your fairy cast Heal Wounds on herself (and maybe even shed a
tear at the memory of her long-lost priestly husband).
7.0 Tryton: Making the Most of Trynnie Misery
---------------------------------------------
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
--Aldous Huxley
Fuzzfas can sell you Barriers (Missle Shield), Itching, and Relics (which you
already have).
Don Barlone has the Cane of Corpus. If you can take him, do it, and snag the
cane. If you can Pickpocket, do it, and snag the cane. Otherwise just add
him to your list of NPCs to screw later, and plan on coming back. Do not talk
to him, and if you accidentally do, do not hire him to steal anything from the
Savant. We do not want to run into the Savant in the swamp for any reason,
and not talking to or killing Barlone will help with that. Running into the
Savant in the swamp usually ends to a Rapax blockade of Ascension Peak, which
we also do not want. At least, not until we're good and levelled.
Speaking of things we may not yet be strong enough to get, we'll want to
pick up the Boomerang Shuriken at some point, too. Spells will be our bread
and butter for ranged combat, obviously, but there's something very cool and
Krull-like about a ninja star which, once thrown, autoexecutes a Return to
Sender. Plus there's a Banish spellbook in the very same cathedral.
8.0 Rounding out the Spellbooks
-------------------------------
The goggles! They do nothing!
--Raineer Wolfcastle, last words
By now we're preparing to switch to Ninja. Before we do that we *need* all
the spells we can get. Here's a list of what to buy and where to buy it.
Sadock, Lower Marten's Bluff:
Booms, Breath, Corrosion, Dark Hound, Freezing, Frost, Fumes, Holding,
Knocks, Lesser Cures, Light, Paralysis Cures, Resting, Silence, Slowness,
Sleep, Sound, Stamina
Crock, Swamp:
Acid, Armormelt, Corrosion, Crushing, Detection, Disease Cures, Ego Whip,
Elements, Fire, Fiery Rings, Haste, Ice, Insight, Removal, Retaliation,
Souls, Superman, Traps, Whirlwind
Umpani Base Camp, Kunar:
Armorplate, Blinding, Burning Thoughts, Chameleons, Energy, Fireballs,
Itching, Knocks, Light, Lures, Razors, Resting, Rocks, Webs
Ferro, Rapax Castle:
Dessication, Elements, Freeze All, Heal All, Hexes, Psionic Blast,
Purification, Return Portal, Sanity, Set Portal, Summoning, Toxic Cloud
Once you can get your level 6 spells, take your pick of them. Fill out your
spellbook if you missed any essential lower-level spells first. Don't forget:
you don't really need Resurrection as a solo character ;-)
9.0 Into the Big, Bad World
---------------------------
For every good man that is born, another good man must die. Yet somehow the
factory keeps pumping out losers and we have no idea how to get rid of them.
--Kersus
After this... well, you're on your own. You should now have a fairy with
awesome attributes and resistances, not to mention a very, very flattering
selection of spells. All that's left is to gather equipment and powerlevel
like mad. As stated, my fairy will be abusing the Cane of Corpus, but there
are probably other strong paths to persue as well--dual wielding the CoC and
a Rod of Sprites, perhaps, or foregoing weapons altogether and sticking to
Martial Arts. Heck, you might even switch to Monk next for the Blindness
immunity and the Damage Resistance. Whatever floats your boat.
For foot protection, just slap on the Spike Boots you find near Marten's
ghost. +5 AC is the best your little fairy can get. Other than these
shoes, the only other footwear the fairy ninja can wear is the tabi boots.
After you're able to ditch the Helm of Serenity, your best headwear option
will likely be the Helm of Brilliance. You can find one in Lower Marten's
Bluff. U/L body armor is really your call; I never switched from the
gossamers I started with, myself. And if you're dual wielding, Winterwand
makes a great secondary weapon that will also use your high Staves & Wands
skill.
At any rate, good luck! Feel free to ask me things or make suggestions. You
can reach me at
[email protected] and as long as your subject title
says "About Wizardry 8" I'll open it and read it. Otherwise it'll probably
get caught by one of my numerous spam subjectline filters and thrown in the
trash.
10.0 Credits and Whatnot
------------------------
It doesn't matter. Whenever I see my name in print, it's never spelled right.
--Sheri C. Furow
Most of the information here was gathered by hand, but there are a few things
I would like to point out. First off, all lists of what merchants sell which
spellbooks were compiled by Mage77 on the Ironworks board, and to him I give
all the credit for that.
The chart which describes the minimum spell levels and required spellcasting
skills was compiled using information I gathered in the Universal Hint System,
which can be found either through the Gamefaqs Wizardry 8 FAQs page or
accessed directly here:
http://www.uhs-hints.com/uhsweb/wiz8.php
The Wiz8 manual itself is chock-full of useful information. If you haven't
gone through it cover-to-cover at least once, do so. The fairy you save may
be your own.
Finally, long, long ago, someone posted on the GameFAQs message board for Wiz8
that only the highest spell school is raised when you cast a multi-school
spell. I checked this out and it's true. That post is gone now, and so I
can't credit the person who told me about it. Whoever you are, way to go.
Them eyes do be KEEN.
You can go ahead and print as many copies of this for your own use as you
want. You can even save it to your harddrive. But the only internet site
that may host this document is gamefaqs, www.gamefaqs.com. Anybody else
who wants it has to contact me and ask. And, obviously, be granted permission.
Cuz this document is copyright 2003, Tyler Patterson style, baybee.
11.0 Summary of Version Changes
-------------------------------
Change change change change change change change change change change change
chaaaaAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAaaaAAAAnge, uh huh, change change,
change change, change change... change... change.... change.... change.
--Counting Crows
v1.0 Originally posted.
v1.1 Section 11 (this section) added
-changed character creation section after noticing fairies can't wear
the Necklace of Endurance
-added equipment information to section 9
-stuck a few new quotes in
