Wizardry 7 Hints - part 2

                   Original author unknown

Changing Professions

When you change professions, you go back to experience level 1 in
the new profession. Your stats drop sharply, but your skills
remain the same. Furthermore, you retain all the spells and spell
points your character had already acquired.

In order to consider the good and bad points of changing
professions, let's look at a level 10 mage who is considering a
switch to a samurai. If the mage has just turned level 10, he
needs 300,000 experience points to reach level 11. If he switches
to a samurai, those same 300,000 experience points will get him
back to about experience level 8 as a samurai. Thus, if the
character stays a mage, those 300,000 points give him only one
skill improvement (from level 10 to 11); if the character changes
to a samurai, the character gets *seven* skill improvements.

The moral is clear: if you want to improve skills quickly, switch
professions somewhere around level 10. The price is that your
stats go back down to pretty pathetic levels, but they increase
fairly quickly again.

Other things to consider: low level characters can only cast
spells at low levels. Thus your level 10 mage may be able to cast
a 7-dice fireball, but your level 1 samurai will only be able to
cast a 1-die fireball, even if he has plenty of spell points
available.  Don't switch professions just before you go into a
major fight, and don't switch professions for all your characters
at once. Stagger your switches so that you always have a few
reasonably high level characters, so they can cast high level
spells.

Certain other skills also depend on experience level. For example,
the ninja and monk natural armor class advantage is based on a
combination of ninjutsu skill and experience level. For every
experience level you increase, your AC can go down -1 if you have
a high ninjutsu rating. Therefore switching classes (temporarily)
negates a huge AC advantage if you're a monk or a ninja.

Just for the sake of curiosity, I kept one of my characters in his
original profession for the whole game: a Dracon Ninja. By the end
of the game, *all* of my other characters had skills of 100 in
Kirijutsu and Ninjutsu; the original Ninja didn't. Also, all my
other characters had scores of 100 in at least two magic
disciplines; the original Ninja only had about 60 in his first
discipline (Alchemy, of course). Finally, the original Ninja was
only about 4 experience levels ahead of the next closest
character.  Changing professions really does make stronger, more
versatile characters, more quickly.

Note: To change to a new profession, you need the minimum stats
for that profession. Suppose you have a mage who you want to turn
into a monk, but who doesn't have enough Piety. Keep clicking on
the mage's candle to find out when the mage is getting close to
going up an experience level. Save when you get close. When the
mage finally goes up a level, the game increases various stats at
random. If you don't get an increase in Piety, terminate the game,
load the previous save game, and take another shot at it. Repeat
until you get the Piety increase you want. It may take some
patience, but it saves time in the long run.

@~More next issue













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