Wizardry 7 Hints - Part 1

                  Original author unknown

Choosing a Party

During character creation, you get a number of bonus points,
randomly generated. Keep rolling until you get a reasonably high
set of bonus points -- there's no sense in starting off with a
weak character.

You want all your characters to be magic-users of some kind, even
if they're primarily fighters. For example, don't settle for a
fighter; wait till you get enough bonus points to get a Valkyrie, a
ninja, a monk, or some other magic-using class. You may have to try
again and again before you get a decent number of bonus points; the
average seems to be about 10, but if you try often enough you can
get twice that. I wouldn't settle for anything less than 15. You
want your characters to start as powerfully as possible, so they
aren't always dying in the early stages of the game.

Note: Some people on the net have pointed out that in the later
stages of the game, your front-line fighters have such great
weapons, you don't want them to waste their time casting spells. I
would say that it depends on the spells. First of all, the more
people who have Heal Wounds, the better. Second, spells like
Silence, Dispel Undead, and Astral Gate can quickly neutralize
groups of magic-using attackers, and this is sometimes crucial to
winning a combat. It's true that your front line usually just
bashes away with their Light Sabers, Excalibur, and all the
rest...but from time to time, it's tremendously helpful to have
them cast spells instead.

I have observed that different races recover magic points at
different speeds. Since you can't change races, pick races that
can recover magic quickly -- you don't want to be stuck with
slow-recovering characters later in the game. Good races: elf,
gnome, faerie, rawulf, mook, and maybe felpurr. Other races are
slower to get back magic points.

Beginning parties should contain a mage and priest. These "pure"
classes learn spells faster than classes that mix magic with
better fighting ability (e.g. bards, rangers, etc.). They can
change later on, once they've acquired a good mix of spells. Even
if you have enough points to become one of the advanced characters
(Bishop, Samurai, etc.) pick simple characters (Mage, Priest,
etc.) to start out with, because they advance faster than the
advanced classes.

Spells you want ASAP:

Pr: Heal Wounds, Bless, Cure Poison, Silence, Hold Monster
M: Energy Blast, Direction, Knock-knock, Magic Missile,
Sleep, Blinding Flash, Wizard's Eye, Fireball, Iceball
Ps: Heal Wounds, Identify, Divine Trap, Silence
Al: Heal Wounds, Acid Splash, Cure Poison, Fire Bomb

Many other spells are useful to have (three cheers for Nuclear
Blast!) but the above are the ones you should aim for first.

Just for the sake of interest, my party started as:
Rawulf Valkyrie (F)
Felpurr Monk (M)
Dracon Ninja (M)
Gnome Priest (F)
Human Bard (F)
Elf Mage (F)

I found that the human just couldn't keep up with the others. I
wanted to use her as a spellcaster most of the time, but she just
didn't recover magic fast enough. Instead of a human, pick a
Faerie...but don't start the Faerie as a bard, because a Faerie
Bard doesn't get the Lute of Sleep that other bards start with.

@~To be continued




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