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[RPB]

Oops, too late. I already started you with 13 Vitality/18 Agility.

With our new recruits we take on a group of champ samurai. They one-shot Servant Corps from 31 health, but just about everyone else survived. Plus, they dropped us another short sword +2, so now Nirur can make a real contribution to combat. Unfortunately we actually didn't have enough money to resurrect Servant Corpse right away so we had to go back without him and beat up a rogue for cash.

Oh hey! Guess who we run into!



The kobold kings are pretty hardcore and there's 5 of them, so we make a strategic retreat.

Next up we run into some priests and beat them up for their stuff. We're getting quite a lot of swag now that we can open chests with near-impunity, but most of it's junk. inaluct does score some plate mail though.

By this point RPB II has hit level 7, which means 4th level mage spells. My arsenal is starting to get halfway decent, so we should be set up for some good grinding now.



(I'm not sure for whose benefit I'm posting screenshots of my own character for, so apparently I just like to brag.)

Armed with magic, we blow through an unprecedented three encounters without having to stop and rest, two groups of ogre lords and another group of priests. We are practically wading in loot now, and although they're not especially good experience we still get a few more levelups for the newbies.





I almost order Nirur to make stone mugs to clean up that excess granite stone when I remember that this isn't DF. Actually if this is the same as the "Stone stone" from the console ports (which use different item naming schemes) then I think the granite stone is a magic item which casts MONTINO (silence) which is actually real damn handy. Nirur's holding onto it since he doesn't have any spells of his own and his attack's still not as good as inaluct's by a good margin.

(Also notice that bad luck with levelups has left Cerej actually having less Piety than it takes to qualify to become a priest! This is resulting in noticeably slow spell acquisition, but on the plus side he is MAD BEEFY from his vitality.)

[Nirur Torir]

This rock is now My Precious. I shall never let anybody else carry it, and shall be very sad when it disappears strangely after being used.

I am suspicious of the lack of deaths of a treasure hunter with low vitality. With 6 AC. Boo, I'm a useless drain on society, regardless of my treasure acquisition skills. Fortunately I'm evil, so I don't actually care.

[inaluct]

Yay! Soon, we will conquer the first level of the dungeon!

[RPB]

I am suspicious of the lack of deaths of a treasure hunter with low vitality.

Don't worry, we will soon rectify this!

Now that RPB II can blow stuff up in halfway decent fashion it's time to explore a little (I've only ever played the console version which uses a different dungeon layout, so I'm pretty much new to this). There's a chain of tiny rooms right next to the entrance to the dungeon that tends to be full of monsters, which is all we've seen so far. Looking around, the first floor seems to consist of a big square bisected with two perpendicular hallways (i.e. a box with a + through it), and apparently some rooms in the quadrants thus created (this is where the aforementioned rooms we've been grinding by the entrance are). In the middle is some kind of temple like structure that gives us a plot of sorts:





If this was a console RPG from Japan we could make fun of the bad translation, but this is 100% pure American so they don't have any excuse, for their gratuitous use, of commas (and I thought I was bad). I also like how they take three dialogues to display what could have easily been fit into one if they trimmed the rather pointless exposition dump a bit.

Anyhow, we don't really care about the plot for a while because we still have to grind a lot (although we probably wouldn't care about it in any event). Those damn spiders are everywhere around here; it's a good thing they're so weak because I'm pretty sure they're the ones that drain levels, although fortunately they still haven't landed any hits. After a spider or two we run into some of these guys:



I'm surprised we've gone so long without seeing any of these guys (pssst they are wizards if you did not figure that out!). They've been one of my major concerns up to this point, so it's good that we're only now seeing them. Here is a dramatization of what would have happened if we had run into any of them earlier:



(For those not familiar with Wizardry and its nonsense magic words, that last word is DALTO. It's a 4th level group damage spell that's nominally some kind of cold blast but elemental damage generally seems to do jack all in these games. I tend to prefer DALTO because it's quicker to type than the more or less identical LAHALITO spell which supposedly is fire-based.)

However, we are awesome so this does not happen.



We already have a priest that can cast MONTINO himself and a mage and bishop that can cast KATINO to incapacitate these guys and actually RPB II could probably really mess them up with his own DALTO spell so this is probably unnecessary, but I'm not taking any chances. We ambushed these mages and the game actually prevents spellcasters from using spells in surprise rounds, so using the granite stone lets us silence most of the mages before they even have a chance of rolling initiative (most expendables other than potions/scrolls and unique effect stuff has multiple charges, so we're not just blowing the stone on a random encounter on the first floor of the dungeon). Note that this right here is probably the most useful thing a thief will ever accomplish in battle prior to like Wizardry V or so. Thieves in Proving Grounds can only dream of being this useful.

The next fight we get ambushed by major daimyos, which aren't quite as bad as champ samurai except they do seem to have a little bit of magic resistance. Having dared to be productive Nirur Torir is struck down for his hubris, so we have to drag him back to the Temple of Cant. Which screws up and ashes him, then demands 3000+ gold we don't have. We've got some spare loot from the last trip to identify though.



Oh hey look! Surely we can sell this wand off for cash to resurrect Nirur hahaha no.

Actually I would if I could--if they're this easy to find in this version then we'll probably be up to our asses in them by the time we finish this game. These supercharge your spell slots, which isn't as useful as it sounds but is handy for emergencies. Instead we go beat some money out of a spider (luckily for our thiefless selves its chest only has a gas bomb on it), which combined with the sale of our accumulated miscellaneous junk is enough to resurrect Nirur. We do so, but he gets himself decapitated by werelions shortly thereafter. Not before we scrape together enough money for a basic raise, though, and this time the priests do it right the first time.

Somewhere along the lines we've picked up an ?AMULET. I like where this is going!



Although I wasn't really expecting it to be this good. For the uninitiated, the good news is that the amulet of skill can be used to grant someone 50,000 experience instantly (!) The awesome news is that it has multiple charges. The bad news is that it generally doesn't have more than a couple. The really crappy news is that the way you find out that it's out of charges is that it disintegrates you beyond any possibility of resurrection.

I think I've read somewhere that the first use is always safe. So first off, who should we give the free 50k experience to? And second... any volunteers want to risk using it afterwords?

I'm too lazy to do any more screen captures, so here's a quick rundown of where everyone's at:

inaluct, level 9 N human fighter
Nirur Torir, level 7 E hobbit thief
Servant Corps, level 8 G dwarf bishop
Ceres, level 7 G dwarf priest
RPB II, level 8 G gnome mage

Priest or mage seem to be the best candidates as that gets us higher level spells faster, so that comes down to a choice between healing or explodeyness. More hitpoints for our loot-getter wouldn't be terrible either, but thieves level up relatively quickly on their own when they're not busy dying and even with Nirur's fairly decent vitality they don't get a lot of hitpoints per level.

[Nirur Torir]

Liars! They said that they'd split the gold with me after I died and they "accidentally" failed to revive me properly!

Uhh ... I mean, give the amulet to the wizard.

[Cerej]

We should give RPB II the first use.  More explody spells are better for us at this stage in the game.

However, I'm willing to use the amulet second.  50K of shiny experience could go a long way towards independence from those overcharging priests of Cant.  But I only want to use it once.  No sense in tempting fate so much.

[RPB]

Sounds like a plan to me. The Amulet of Skill doesn't disintegrate you this time, so we now have 5th level priest and mage spells. This technically means we can do our own basic raise dead, but I'm pretty sure the Temple of Cant has a higher success rate anyhow. We're really raking money in now anyways.

If anyone else wants me to risk using the Amulet of Skill on your own character I'm game for it, but bear in mind there is a statistically significant possibility of spontaneous existence failure. RPB II also has the MAKANITO spell which is an instant win button for most fights right now, although once we go any deeper it's going to be useless against a lot of monsters.

Cerej also finally learned MAPORFIC (he had 4th level spells before but took his sweet time learning them all; his piety has gone up a bit but still isn't stellar), which gives us a more or less permanent AC buff. This means I have to start remembering to use the other semi-permanent buff spells like LATUMAPIC, which means no more making fun of unidentified monsters alas. As we start going further down knowing exactly what enemies are is going to be too important to pass up.

[inaluct]

You know, we could always just make a level one character and use it on them, right?

[RPB]

It's an option. We've got our bases reasonably covered for the time being with the 5 we have though.

More grinding and exploration. As mentioned the first floor seems to be divided into quadrants with a path around the outside and through the middle. Started exploring inside the individual quadrants but not finding anything interesting in terms of quest items.

Random loot is another story though, and we've found one of the most random (and most awesome) bits of loot, the coin of power. When used it changes someone into a random class, bypassing any alignment or minimum ability requirements. Moreover, normally when you change class it resets your level to 1 and resets your attributes to the minimum scores for your race, but items with class changing abilities get around this so you keep your level and ability scores. So even if you get a class you don't like you can use your existing attributes to qualify for an immediate manual class change.

We probably want to save this for level 13--that's when priests and mages get their highest level spells, which means we can either try changing Cerej or RPB II to something else (keeping their 7th level spells!) or try changing inaluct or Nirur (possibly turning them into 13th level casters that will get their own 7th level spells practically right away--also keeping their HP, which would be huge for inaluct). But it's something to keep in mind, and if anyone has any other plans that might use this I'm all ears. (Also let me know if anyone is looking to undergo a conventional class change at some point.)

[RPB]

We're taking out quite a few of the



now. I can't tell if they give out good experience or loot though because the post-combat screens fly past at lightning speed. Also, speaking of Dorf Fortress:



I hope we don't run into any carp later. Oh, and while we're on the topic of things not to run into:



Hooray for impenetrable darkness! We stumble around blindly exhaustively mapping the southwest quadrant in the dark only to find that it contains all of jack squat. Grrrr.

And oh goody the southeast quadrant is dark too. This time we actually find something of interest though!



It almost looks like we might be getting somewhere on our item collection quest, but surprise! This is an endless hallway that just teleports us backwards so we can't actually progress down here. Time to explore the rest of the level.



Here's what I got. Granted this is certainly  kind of redundant as guides for this game have probably been available for longer than I've been alive but I'd like to keep this run semi-blind so I'm mapping it out manually. Dark gray areas are darkness, primary colors are teleports (bright green -> dark green, etc.), the orangish square in the corner is our stairs up, the pink square near it is a pit trap that does a hell of a lot of damage, pale blue squares are story text.

The dark blue-gray square seems to be inaccessible. That and the end of the endless hallway are the only squares unaccounted for on the level. Since you will notice my map legend does not include any stairs down, we are basically stuck here until we're able to teleport, which as I recall doesn't happen until level 13. The good news is just about everyone's at level 11; the bad news is that getting from 11 to 13 takes about twice as much experience or so than we've accumulated so far. Yay for grinding.

Oh, and WTF:



Were. Amoeba.

Yyyyyyeaahh.




Forgot to mention: at least we're getting some good equipment now. inaluct picks up a long sword +2, plate mail +2, gloves of copper, and helm +1. We've also found a breast plate +1 for Cerej, and a staff +2 for RPB II (not that it really matters what weapon the mage has). We're loaded with cash by now, so I went ahead and upgraded everyone else's armor and shields to +1. Also, Nirur Torir had an alignment change a while back: watching us not attacking monsters indiscriminately has transformed him from a baby-eating psychopath to the local Boy Scout troop leader.

[Servant Corps]

Also, Nirur Torir had an alignment change a while back: watching us not attacking monsters indiscriminately has transformed him from a baby-eating psychopath to the local Boy Scout troop leader.

NOOOOOO!

[Nirur Torir]

Worry not for me, my friend, for I have seen the error of my ways and repented. I may be beyond salvation, yet I must spend the rest of my life seeking redemption for past misdeeds. Those babies were rather yummy though.

[RPB]

Was grinding away when I saw this happen:



Yes, Nirur just disarmed a trap in his sleep.

The amount of cool loot we're accumulating is starting to take up too much space that could be used to collect even more cool loot, so I hired a butler to sit in town and hold on to some of our stuff:



The Stone of Youth can be used to lower someone's age by a year. Mind Stone and Stone of Piety give +1 IQ and +1 Piety, respectively. All the stones typically have ~1-3 charges and amazingly none of them randomly kill you.

However, the real coolness is the last item in the list, the Metamorph Ring. Gives the user a free class change to Lord, which is easily one of the best classes in the game (full combat abilities of a fighter combined with priest spells that are only a couple of levels behind a priest, unlike the bishop's slow-ass spell acquisition). Pretty sure it's one use only though.

Unlike the coin we can plan its use a bit more carefully since we know what class it gives. The best candidate for using it seems to be inaluct: going Fighter -> Lord won't impair his combat ability, and he'll start picking up priest spells as he levels (not sure how many he'll pick up given that he has a piety of 2, but we could always feed him a stone of piety or two--note that we have one more on top of what Jarvis is holding, too.) This is pretty much the only way for a neutral character like inaluct to get priest spells, short of using the coin and hoping you get the class you want.

Nirur and Servant Corps are both currently filling vital item-acquisition roles that we can't replace right away, and while Mage -> Lord is a really awesome upgrade (has mage spells + learns priest spells + gets all weapons/armor) RPB II can probably switch to Lord naturally in 4-5 levels.

Cerej already casts priest spells so he doesn't stand to gain a lot, although it would increase his tankageness a bit. But since we already have a coin in reserve it might be a better idea to hold onto that and use it on him once he gets all his 7th level spells. Alternately, Cerej is only 4 points of IQ away from qualifying from samurai so with a couple of levels + Mind Stone he could change to samurai anyhow, which is another good class change (like Mage -> Lord it eventually gets you all mage and priest spells and still gets heavy weapons/armor).



So, any objections to metamorphing inaluct? And any plans for Cerej (metamorph, coin of randomness, wait for samurai, or just stay cleric)?

[inaluct]

I don't have any objecting to undergoing a metamorphosis.

I wouldn't in real life either, if only because the word 'metamorphosis' sounds awesome.

[RPB]

Tragedy strikes for 17 damage!



This is what really sucks about the early Wizardry games. The dungeons in 1 & 2 are pretty tiny, so the length of the game is based more on grinding than exploration or questing. Most fights yield a couple thousand experience tops but periodically some fucker drains you and zaps away ~400,000-600,000 XP worth of advancement. At least it lets you keep and continue using all your spells, even ones that you're technically not high enough level to cast anymore.

Fortunately RPB II is safely out of the range of enemies with level drain attacks, so the grind-a-thon's main goal is not wasted!



The little inaccessible 1x1 room is going to stay unexplored because teleporting into it would be an instant party-wipe if it's solid rock. But we're about to go pwn the crap out of that endless hallway.



For once I am glad to have the enemy description, because I probably would've had a hard time figuring out this was an animated suit of armor just looking at it. This is technically a boss fight, but it would be a total joke even if it weren't for the fact that the game forces you to be around level 13 just to reach it. Its only attacks are physical hits with single-digit damage, but as might be expected of magical legendary armor it has ridiculously good AC and is resistant to pretty much all magic. Too bad Wizardry's armor-debuff spells don't even look at magic resistance!

The rewards, however, are not a joke at all.



inaluct is still a fighter; metamorphing him wouldn't have much effect until he actually levels up anyway, and I wanted to make sure no one had any other idea for the metamorph ring. (We were drowning in stones of mind/piety so I went ahead and expended a couple on him, though, and got rather lucky with the number of uses we got out of them). But yeah. That is totally -13 AC. I'm pretty sure that's better than anything you could achieve in Wizardry 1 (at least without equipping Werdna's Amulet), and you'd pretty much have to grind several uber-rare drops just to get close to that.

Incidentally, we also picked up another coin of power, so if anyone feels like trying it out for the hell of it we've got a spare.

Oh, and lest I forget:



Huzzah! New areas to explore! New monsters to laugh at!